


Still Talking When You're Not There

by 7PercentSolution



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Case Fic, Destroying Moriarty's Web, Gen, Hearing Voices, Hiatus, Imprisonment, John coping with grief, Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, Sherlock in Tibet, Sleep Deprivation, Torture, talking when you're not there, wait til you find out what happened in China, you thought Serbia was bad?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 13:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/pseuds/7PercentSolution
Summary: Want to know what happened to Sherlock while he was on his mission to destroy Moriarty's network? And how did John cope with the "death" of Sherlock. These are the missing scenes, in a series of one shot chapters that add up to why both men end up talking to the other one when they are not there.





	1. Answering Your Question

"What are you doing?"

It's in the middle of the night. February in Almaty, Kazakhstan. There's a stray dog barking somewhere out there in the snow. Minus 19 centigrade outside, with six foot long icicles hanging down from the eaves of the rundown Soviet era hotel. Sherlock is feeling cold, hungry and alone, trying to find some respite before the morning, when he launches his campaign against the two "consultant criminals" who have been siphoning large quantities of this Central Asian republic's oil wealth into illegal bank transfers. Protected by a network of corrupt law enforcement officials and a few of the president for life's favourite nephews, this pair have their fingers in so many pies it is hard to keep count: heroin smuggling over the Tien Shen mountains from Afghanistan, people trafficking from Tajikistan into the Middle East for "domestic service", illegal currency deals, arms smuggling to various factions in the Caucus republics, and from the debris of Russia into the hands of Taliban fighters in Pakistan and Afghanistan- Almaty is a key staging post in the 21st century's new silk route.

The question is phrased in that slightly concerned, slightly annoyed tone that John perfected during the last months, before …the fall. That is the term Sherlock decided was the most appropriate term. ( _Yes, John, I KNOW that technically speaking, I jumped)._  But "the fall" seems to capture the experience in its entirety. The fall from public acclaim and the crash of his reputation ( _I don't care about any of that, John; you were the one to whom it seemed to matter.)_ The fall from a state of grace in the biblical sense, is how Sherlock now tends to view it, with the benefit of hindsight. Like Lucifer, he chose to leave his little heaven, and toil amongst the humans of the underworld. Like Lucifer, he is damned to walk the earth alone. ( _Alone, John, because friends protect people- you said it yourself; don't blame me, if for once in my life, I actually listened to you_.)

And he is no longer under any illusions- this is definitely a personal hell. But, as awful as it is, it would have been impossible if he'd had to worry about the risks it posed to John. Sherlock never cares enough about his own safety, so he can take risks that he should never put on another. ( _I'm dead, John. Lost everything already. If I die, it won't matter to anyone or anything; in some respects you'll be safer if I did. By faking my death, I risked your life, and that of Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. It would be better for you all if I had died. This is…selfish of me.)_

But, there are times when he cannot get that little question out of his mind, the one John had asked him numerous times in the last throes of the "game" with Moriarty. "What are you doing?"

_I'm trying to solve this problem, John, find a way to stop the whole of Moriarty's set up- his network of consultants, his insurance protection of assassins and dark angels. Only when they are all removed or wrapped up and delivered with a shiny bow to the authorities will I be able to justify what I have done- to you, to myself. Only then will it be even remotely possible to consider the idea of returning._

When the nights are long and his plans are taking too long to deliver the desired result, he talks to John, tries to explain his actions, tries to counter the arguments that he knows his friend would be throwing at him, if the conversation were taking place, if it could ever take place in the future.

_This is what I am doing, John_. It would never have been enough to kill Moriarty. A man like that, no- not a man; a spider. He'd counted on Moriarty's contingency plan when he was captured; explained it to the head of MI6. "He will have put in place a series of escalating crimes, one for every day you keep him in. At some point, the price of holding him will be too high and you will have to let him go." To her gentle query, "how do you know?" he had answered with certainty, "Because I would in his place." She had looked startled. It was her reaction to his whole idea, but she listened carefully anyway. He continued, " _everyone_  knows that he would have put this in place, that's why none of the other 31 countries are willing to risk arresting him." But, he'd convinced her to do it anyway, as the first step in his plan to bring Moriarty down.

Now, more than fifteen months later, In the middle of the night, when he got bored because he had to wait for the rest of the world to wake up so he could get on with his plans, he rehearses the conversation with John.

_I had to make him fixate on me, John; it was the only way to draw him out. He had to want to destroy me enough that his ego would bring him to the edge, so he'd make a mistake. And it worked. I didn't have to go up there with a gun; he did it to himself. He thought he'd have his revenge on me by what he left in place, but I stopped that by going through with the 'suicide'. Don't you see, John, it was the only way to win? To save you? That's what friends do, isn't it? This time, I haven't disappointed you, I hope._

He'd had this conversation hundreds of times since that afternoon at St Bart's. He hopes, someday, he might have it for real. But, only if he survives long enough to complete the campaign. And only if he decides that John has not "moved on", put his brief time with Sherlock behind him and found other people, other things that are better for him. That's what friends do, protect people. He'd protect John from the truth if it is better for him.

Before, the fall, Sherlock had not told John about the plans, for one simple reason. If he had answered John's question, "what are you doing?" It would have led to another, " _why_ are you doing this?"

Sherlock is still working on his answer for that one.


	2. Answering A Different Question

"What are you doing now?"

It was a simple question, but if John had a pound for every time someone asked him that, he'd have been able to afford a better flat. He'd eventually left 221b- too many memories, the absence of its other occupant too conspicuous. John simply could not "move on" to use his therapist's phrase, when he was constantly confronted with the physical reminders of what he had lost. But, he couldn't afford much on his army pension and the locum work, and he had no intention of having another flatmate anytime soon.

He knew it was a reasonable question. After all, John had defined himself after returning from Afghanistan as Sherlock's flatmate, his colleague, his blogger, his friend, his best friend. Even people who had known John before now thought of him in the new context. He'd had his identity as doctor, army man and serving officer stripped away by the Afghan bullet. In its place, he'd put in a new persona. Their joint friends were almost incapable of seeing John as anything other than being joined at the hip with Sherlock. So much so that it routinely led people to the wrong conclusion.

"Why does it always bother you, John, when people talk about us being a couple?"

He'd struggled to explain it to a self-confessed sociopath, a man for whom almost all relationships were transactional. "Normal People tend to define a person by their relationships, Sherlock. It matters if people think we are lovers, as well as friends, especially when we're not. It limits my options with the opposite sex; they will think of me differently."

Sherlock had looked a little perplexed. "It doesn't stop you from getting women to date you, to sleep with you. Why should other people's views matter?" John had sighed; Sherlock's view of himself was totally self-defined, and it was hard for John to explain his reluctance to invest every single aspect of who he was into being Sherlock's "other half".

So, John understood the logic behind the question being asked of him now. Now that Sherlock was dead, what was John doing? He wished he had a better answer. If Sherlock had asked the question, John knew what he would say.  _Missing you, you big idiot. Trying to figure out why you did what you did. I thought I knew you; I thought I'd figured you out. But, in my book, you'd never have done that. Pulled off a magic trick and walked back into Baker Street a month later? Yeah, that was more your style. Laughing at all us normal mortals trying to deal with 'sentiment' while you were just above it all. And then you did something like that, killing yourself. I can't decide if it was the most monumental act of selfishness – that would be like you- or idiocy. Come to think of it, that might also be just like you, to underestimate what your own feelings might do to you, if they ever emerged long enough to attract your attention._

So, a good part of what he was doing now was having angry conversations with Sherlock. Trying to understand why. That was when he wasn't beating himself up for missing something important before the rooftop, and wondering if there was something he should have said, or done differently to keep one tall brunet, the world's only consulting detective, away from the edge of that roof. In his dreams, he confronted Moriarty at the pool, in dark alleys, in penthouse suites, even in a taxi one time, pulling out his gun and killing the bastard right then and there. Even if he'd gone to prison, it would have been worth it. He knew that from the very first night in Sherlock's company, when he'd killed Jeff Hope to save Sherlock from his own idiocy over which pill to take.

When he couldn't sleep, when the dreams were too vivid, the nightmares too distressing, his mind turned to all the conversations he wished he'd had with Sherlock, before it was too late. One of his favourites on the play list took place in the lab at St Barts, just after he had exploded, "you machine!" in response to Sherlock's callous comment about Mrs Hudson just being his 'landlady'.

In that imagined conversation, John turned back from the door, and said,  _wait a minute. You're doing this on purpose. Hitting every hot button you can to get rid of me. You started it last night, when you said there was something you had to do alone, and left me standing on the street outside Kitty O'Reilly's like some …useless appendage. So, this business with Mrs Hudson- you've set it up knowing I will run to her side, and leave you alone, so….what- you can go play with Moriarty on your own? What are you doing, Sherlock? I'm not leaving here until you tell me what the hell is going on._

Hindsight was always a wonderful thing. It was the conversation he should have had, the one that would have changed things. No matter what Sherlock said, how he tried to fend him off, John would not have let go.  _You've been acting strange for weeks. What are you not telling me, Sherlock?_

This is what John was doing now. Having the conversations in his head that he should have had when Sherlock was still alive.

But, when Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Molly, Mike Stamford or even Harry asked that bloody question, "What are you doing now?" he just replied, "Getting on with things. How are you?"


	3. Knowing The Right Question To Ask

Sherlock watched behind the mirrored observation window, as the FBI interrogator put the pressure on one of Moriarty's 'consultants'. She'd been deprived of sleep for over 50 hours, and he had just given the agent the crucial piece of information that would be needed to break her.

"Your daughter. She's, what, six? And her father is…" he consulted the file in front of him. "Your ex-husband was killed in a gang raid last November. Your parents are dead, and no siblings. So, given the prison sentence you are facing, you might be out for her graduation from high school. Of course, it will be up to the foster parents whether they let you attend…"

The woman who had steadfastly refused to answer their questions for the past week started to cry. Quietly at first, then eventually full throated sobs. The interrogator just patted her hand. "In return for information, the courts may take a different line, be more lenient, in view of your co-operation." The woman couldn't get the words out through her choking sobs, just nodded her assent.

The agent standing next to Sherlock just shook his head and started to laugh quietly. "What is it with you? Every single one of these supposedly hardened criminals, and you just know what buttons to push. Christ, we could use you in our counter-terrorism work; wouldn't need water-boarding or rendition."

People and crying. It was one of those key observational skills that made Sherlock so successful. He had been taught by his mother to understand crying as a social expression, and he knew how to use the knowledge to great effect.

Standing there now, impassively watching the woman crumble and give up information vital to the detective's campaign against Moriarty's North American network, he remembered a conversation with John.

"How do you do that?"

John asked Sherlock as the two of them strode away from the building site where the abandoned rental car had been found. Mrs Monkford had been distressed when they first approached her, trying to fend them off with the comment that she had already spoken to the police. Sherlock had taken one look at her, reached for her hand, and introduced himself as a very old friend of her husband's. With a higher pitched voice than normal and a tremor of emotion, his eyes had welled up with tears. He explained that Ian and he had grown up together and how horrible it was to have found the car with the blood. John had looked on in amazement as Sherlock proceeded to extract every piece of information he needed from her, whilst tears were running down his face. When she had explained why her husband had hired a car, due to the tax disc on his own having expired, Sherlock just said that "was Ian all over." She contradicted him, "No, it wasn't."

John had listened as Sherlock's voice suddenly dropped a full register, and he focused in on her, like some raptor descending on its prey. "Wasn't it?  _Interesting_." He then turned and walked away, leaving Mrs Monkford startled and rather worried that she might have revealed a little too much.

As Sherlock handed over the business card for Janus cars to John, the shorter man asked his question. "How do you do that?"

Sherlock then explained how people who would not answer a direct question will often contradict someone who is suggesting that they have an emotional connection to the person being discussed, as if to prove they know that person better than you. "Think of it as competitive emotionalism, John. It works every time." He had gone on to explain her mistake- she used past tense when referring to her husband, being willing to describe him as dead when everyone else was just saying "missing". Suspicious behaviour indeed.

John wasn't satisfied with Sherlock's explanation. "I didn't ask you  _why_  you did it. I asked  _how._ I mean, how do you turn crying  _on and off_  like that? I've heard actors can do that sort of thing by dredging up some past emotion to trigger tears, but surely, that would be too much  _sentiment_  for you?"

In the taxi taking them to Janus Cars' garage, Sherlock tried to explain.

"Tears are a chemical by-product of crying, which is a stress reaction to pain and suffering. Babies cry because they need something, and parents are biologically programmed to respond to it. Once a person is past infancy, they are taught the socially acceptable reasons for crying. Crying releases adrenocorticotropic hormones which affect your body's response to stress- both physical and emotional, caused by social or interpersonal conflict. There are social occasions when it is called for as a way of creating emotional relationships."

"Yeah, I get the science stuff, Sherlock. But crying is what happens when people feel emotional pain and loss. You might think that people only cry as …I don't know, some kind of social communication, but, Sherlock, people cry when they are alone, when there is no one there to hear them cry. It isn't …transactional. So, how do you  _fake_  it?"

He looked puzzled. "I don't  _fake_  it, John. My tears are biochemical by-products, just like anyone else's."

John had just sighed, frustrated that Sherlock was being obtuse, or purposefully evading the question. He'd let the question lie there between them, unanswered.

Now in the absence of John, he wished he'd been more honest. Sometimes, he imagined the conversation that he hoped one day he might be able to have, when and if it was safe enough to return to London. At some point, John would ask it.  _So, when you were on the rooftop talking to me on the phone, were those_ real _tears, or were you just faking it? Was it all an act, Sherlock, part of the plot, your plan to fool everyone, me included?_

John would believe he had been manipulated, as shamelessly as Sherlock had used the tears to get what he wanted from Mrs Monkford. It would be part of the reason why he would not forgive Sherlock.

Six months after the fall, Sherlock knew how he'd answer the question when it came- truthfully.  _John, I cried as a ten year old child would when my mother died. But I cried all day and all night for weeks, until my father put me away in an institution because I could not control my grief. There I was given drugs and electro-convulsive therapy to stop my crying. Seven months of that worked and when I got out, I didn't cry anymore by choice, not even when I was alone._

_When I needed to use tears as a way of getting evidence on the Monkford case, all I had to do was remember that loss. Did I use that memory to 'fool' you into thinking I was taking my own life? I didn't need to, John. For the first time in my life since my mother died, I was facing the loss of everything I valued. The Work, my home, my city, the people I cared about, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. Most of all, going through with it meant I would lose you. By doing so, I would save your life, but it would be at the cost of our friendship._

_Now I cry when I am alone, because I am alone. Alone is what I have now, but that's acceptable, because my being alone protects…you._


	4. Not Crying

I'm an English male. I've been a serving army officer in a war zone. I'm a doctor. If those three facts don't tell you something about the likelihood of seeing me cry, I don't know what will.

That doesn't mean I haven't had more than my fair share of grief. In my family, acquaintance with death came early. I lost my grandparents in my teens, my mother while I was at medical school and my father while I was on my first tour of duty. I had to be the strong brother to my weak sister, and help her deal with the recriminations and grief, offering comfort where I could in the hope of keeping her away from alcohol. As a doctor in combat, I've seen good friends and colleagues killed, and as a trauma surgeon, I've had too many of my patients die on the table with my hands still in them, or even worse, never even make it to surgery.

All of those roles mean I've seen a lot of people crying in front of me, and each of those roles requires me to respond to their needs first. A lecturer in my second year of medical training explained it, when trying to cover that most difficult of subjects- when a doctor has to tell a patient that they are dying, and then the patient's family that their loved one was dying.

"Crying is a way of letting defences down, of admitting to emotional and physical pain. You need to let them do it; it's a coping mechanism for loss and grief. You have to respect their willingness to let themselves appear weak and distressed. It's a human call for help and comfort, and that's what you need to give them."

No one wants the head of the family, the army captain, the doctor to be weak and tearful in reply. Just does not compute. Every time I felt like doing it, I had to stop myself and let a bit of scar tissue develop around that particular wound. Eventually, as a doctor you learn not to invest so much of yourself in a patient. In a warzone, friendships can be intense, but you all know that it could end with an IED, so you learn not to give  _too_  much. Even in what's left of my family, I let a distance grow between Harry and me, so it didn't crush me every time she relapses. Over time all that builds up to become what my therapist eventually labelled as "trust issues".

Even at the height of my depression after I was invalided out of the service, out of my career as a surgeon, out of the friendships I had allowed, I never let myself appear pathetic in public. If I cried, well, it was between me and my sheets or the bedsit walls.

And then Sherlock came along, and changed my life forever. We were surrounded by murder, crime and the emotional trauma that comes from both, but for the most part I didn't have time to think about loss. Watching him pretend to be 'normal', slipping on the emotions as if they were one of his disguises, even to the extent of faking tears to get something out of a suspect- well, it was manipulation that somehow made the sociopath label plausible. Sometimes I berated him for his lack of emotion, empathy or compassion. Unlike him, I couldn't check those at the door of Baker Street, and sometimes in private, we'd argue about it.

But we made our peace, Sherlock and me. Mycroft was right; with Sherlock I walked the battlefields of London, and found my equilibrium again, to be strong when others needed me to be so. I did worry that someday I might have to deal with Sherlock being killed by some stupid criminal, or an accident when he pushed his luck too far, and then, latterly, when a psychopath threatened to 'burn the heart out of him'. With Sherlock, risking his life to prove he was clever was an occupational hazard, so I got used to thinking through how I would react to his running out of luck one day.

None of that helped, when it came to dealing with Sherlock's suicide. Taking his own life? No, that wasn't even remotely possible. For the first week, I was in too much shock to even consider crying. I just couldn't believe it. Quite simply, I had seen what I had seen- those open, dead blue eyes, the blood on the pavement. I'd seem him jump; I'd felt for the missing pulse. I  _knew_  he was dead, yet I still expected him to come bounding into Baker Street, spouting about how he'd faked his own death, and laughing at everyone's sentiment. The fake death thing? It wasn't like we didn't have prior experience, was it? Ian Monkford's effort with Janus Cars to fake his own murder and escape to South America started the scenario; Irene Adler's appearance on a Barts' slab and then her resurrection gave us yet another example. So, for a while, I kept hoping.

I know the stages of bereavement as well as any doctor- been there, done that, have taught it to my colleagues. I just didn't expect denial to be something I experienced, because, not to put too fine a point on it, I'd never done that before in the face of all the other deaths that I had borne stoically.

It was sitting across from my therapist Ella that I moved on from denial. She forced me say it, and for the longest time, I couldn't do it. Kept trying to form the words, but I couldn't without risking a complete breakdown. I did cry then a little, but didn't lose it completely. Wasn't my finest hour, nor hers. Not a thing she could do or say could provide even a shred of comfort. I wondered if all those people I'd tried to help when they cried thought the same thing about me- totally useless. I didn't return to her again.

When I realised he wasn't coming back, then I went on to anger. I paced around Baker Street glaring at his possessions. I smashed the skull one night. I'd been broken by Sherlock's death, so I broke the skull. Neither of us was needed anymore.

Kept having pissed off conversations in my head:  _Sherlock, how can you be such a bloody selfish idiot? You might not understand emotion, but you've inflicted pain, real pain on those who did care about you. I know it's not an advantage, you moron! Tell me about it! I'm trying to deal with the aftermath of your completely senseless act. If you were in such pain, all you had to do was say something, tell me what you were feeling, even cry- I would have been there for you. But you never did, not until it was too late and you were on the roof and ready to jump, no matter what I said or did. You made me listen to you cry. Did you fake that, too, as a way of making me pay for my failings as a friend? What other excuse can I give you- YOU MADE ME WATCH YOU DIE. Or maybe I'm giving you too much credit. You probably didn't even care what I thought, because you didn't know how to care about anything or anyone. You really are a heartless machine. You were my bloody lifeline, and you never even thought of what your emotional ineptitude would do to me._

Eventually the anger just burned out of me, to be replaced by…questions. I just sat in my chair at Baker Street and looked at the empty chrome and leather chair and wondered, why? Was it something I'd done? Something I hadn't done? It's bargaining- trying to figure out how I could have saved you, and therefore myself. I drove myself crazy a bit, and it was what pushed me into leaving Baker Street for my own flat.

I'm in the depression stage now. Don't go out much, only talk to people enough to keep them thinking I'm OK. To all intents and purposes, the outside world thinks I have accepted the situation and am moving on. It's a lie, something I've learned to do over the years. I'm not sure that any scar tissue can form over a wound this deep. It hurts on too many levels. And as long as I can keep up appearances, though, they leave me alone.

But, in the confines of the four walls of my new bedsit, where no one needs me to be a head of family, an army captain, a doctor, or even a best friend anymore, I cry for both of us.


	5. The Hardest Job in the British Security Services

Agent Griffin kept his eye on the tall lanky blond as he stepped off the pavement and dodged around the parked car, some fifty meters ahead. He knew that the taller man was running on pure adrenaline as he put the final pieces together tonight. Earlier in the day, Griffin had watched the man he knew as Lars Sigurson come out of the bank in Lucerne, and start the process of destroying the Moriarty network in Switzerland. Lars was quietly but ruthlessly taking apart every piece of the Consulting Criminal's legacy that he could get his hands on. By setting the local network members in the five major cities of Switzerland against one another, he had lit the fuse that would blow up the network's main money laundering hub, seriously weakening operations in the rest of the world.

Fluent in twelve languages and trained to the highest standards available in martial arts, Griffin had been hand-picked by Mycroft Holmes for the role. A former Special Ops man, then member of the Royal Protection Group, he'd followed princes into armed combat zones and kept them alive under enemy gunfire.

"No one knows you are working for me- not Five, Six; not even my own people. This is …personal. The hardest job in the British Security Services, Mr Griffin, keeping an eye on this man. He will not thank you for it; he probably won't even acknowledge your presence for weeks. Don't approach him unless he asks for it. Even then, don't expect him to talk to you, or to answer any question you might have. Watch, observe, report back to me. And if he needs protection or back up, give it. No matter what he says or does. You are there to keep him alive."

Babysitting a double agent might not have been thought of as an astute career move, but after three months of trying to keep pace with Sigurson, Griffin now knew he'd learned more in that time than he had in the previous ten years of work. This man used his brain the way normal people used their fists or a gun. And his was just as much a battlefield as Afghanistan had been- worse, actually.

After three months shadowing duty, taking him from Minsk, to Kiev and then onto Budapest, they were now in Switzerland. His daily reports to Holmes back in London were becoming increasingly concerned. "I know you said he wouldn't talk to me. But, sir, he doesn't talk to anyone now. It's …worrying. Occasionally when he is in role- acting the part to get on the inside and figure out what is going on. But even that is kept to the bare minimum- maybe a half dozen sentences every third or fourth day. He prefers to break and enter the premise at night, gut their IT systems for what he is looking for, and then he locks himself in a hotel room, working alone. Then, when he comes out, all hell breaks loose in the network and suddenly we're in the middle of a gang war."

The aristocratic British voice at the end of the phone them asked him, "and are you keeping him away from the gunfire of that gang war, Agent Griffin?" A question mildly asked, but with the full knowledge that giving an answer Holmes didn't want to hear could cost him his career, Griffin replied, "as best I can, sir. He knows I am here. Doesn't acknowledge me, but doesn't go out of his way to avoid me, either."

That calm voice in London sighed. "Then keep your distance, unless you think he is unwell or in need of assistance. I trust you to use your discretion. Just don't let him out of your sight. He is too important an asset, as I am sure you now appreciate."

0oOo

_I'm losing the sound of your voice, John. How can that be possible? I thought I had you safely stored in my Mind Palace, proof against whatever Moriarty's dregs could throw against me. But two years on, and I am losing it. I know what you'd say, when we have our little chats, but, I am beginning to wonder if I am just imagining too much, rather than remembering._

Late at night, when he had to take a break from the work, Sherlock found himself longing for a violin, with a craving just as strong as his addiction days. But, he had to travel light and not attract attention, so it wasn't an option. After days of computer work, the occasional text or abrupt telephone conversation with a criminal on a burn phone, the only solace left to him was talking in his mind with John, explaining to him the most recent case and how it had unfolded.

"Sorry, John. This one in Locarno is boring. Not worthy of a post on that blog of yours. Nothing particularly unusual, just a load of criminals getting greedy and shoving money around the world. That last bit's been complicated, but once the brainwork was done, ultimately tedious. The only interesting thing has been figuring out who the dark angels are- accountants, lawyers, a senior civil servant in the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, that crooked judge in the canton. Digging out the dirt on them has been more challenging, if only to see if their cooperation is being coerced or bought. The former can be salvaged, if set free from the network, the latter need to be brought to justice. It changes what evidence I send off to the powers that be."

_Sherlock, does that mean you are playing judge, jury and executioner? Is that right?_  He could hear the moral indignation in his flatmate's tone.

"It's efficient, John. And that's why I can do this when no country's security services would dare. Too much due process needed when you take a government wage. It can all be left at the doorstep of one of Moriarty's own consultants, this Norwegian fellow called Lars Sigurson. Great disguise. Only trouble is that Lars leads a rather boring life."

oOo

Boring is not an adjective that Agent Griffin would have applied to the life of the man he was supposed to be protecting. Particularly, not tonight. As Lars walked down the street lined with Locarno's most expensive designer stores, Griffin was keeping his eye on the tall man following him. The unknown stalker was good at it, almost as good as the agent was- blending in with the passing pedestrians, commuters going home, or late night shoppers. The pavements were crowded enough to give the man enough cover. He couldn't be sure whether Lars was aware of being followed, or whether because he expected Griffin to be there, he might be mistaking this chap for him. It was worrying.

The agent was not surprised at the walk-about; it was something that Lars was prone to doing. Most nights it would be very late indeed, or to put it another way, very early. When the streets were at their most empty, the tall blond would stride out. His path did not seem pre-decided; sometimes he would double-back to investigate some bit of architecture that caught his eye. One thing Griffin had noticed was that the Norwegian had an uncanny ability to spot (and avoid) a CCTV camera. They were much less common on the continent than they were in Britain, but this man knew a lot about camera angles, too. Even if he had to pass under one, he knew just how to hold his head and shoulders to obscure facial images that could be recognised. Griffin had learned a lot about him just from something as basic as shadowing.

The stalker twenty metres in front of him stopped, looking startled and breaking his cover as a normal pedestrian. Griffin realised that Lars had vanished. Based on his previous experience of following the Norwegian, Griffin assumed that he had entered one of the brightly lit shops, whilst screened by a crowd of evening pedestrians. The same conclusion must have occurred to the shadow, who turned around and headed back in the direction of Griffin. For a moment, the British agent got a good look at his face, before he ducked into the Globus department store. He looked vaguely familiar, but Griffin couldn't place the man.

He knew Lars's choice was a good place to throw a tracker off his scent. The department store would be crowded and there would be other entrances and exits, different areas and additional floors, all of which provided a safe vantage point to see who was following him. He also guessed that Lars would head for an alley exit, possibly a goods delivery door, so he could avoid being seen exiting by anyone else. Trackers tended to work in teams, but Griffin had not spotted any others on the street yet, despite looking for them. Rather than enter the store himself, he headed straight for the delivery bay around the back.

Unfortunately, his first attempt didn't work, as he discovered once he got around the corner. The store joined directly onto the next building, so Griffin had to backtrack and then head all the way around the other side. By the time he reached the alley, he could see that it was dimly lit and there were no vans in sight as the delivery business was over for the day. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw two men about twenty metres away. They were fighting. As he broke into a run, he shouted, hoping that the distraction might make the attacker hesitate. He also pulled his gun from the holster under his arm.

There was a glint of silver in the attacker's hand, picked out of the gloom by the small light over the goods entrance. Undeterred, Lars moved in and grappled with his attacker. He slapped the man's left ear very hard, and then took advantage of the man's startled reaction to the unorthodox move. A swift duck under the slashing knife and then Lars was behind his assailant, with the man caught in a head-lock.

As Griffin came up to the two, there was the sound of a gunshot, and then the ping of a ricochet, with stone chips flying off the wall behind Lars. Griffin turned to scan for the gunman, and realised that the two of them were seriously exposed. A one-way street with only one exit, and that was where the gunfire had come from.

He heard Lars mutter behind him. "I don't have time for this." There was a crunching sound, and Griffin caught the sight of the assailant slumping to the ground. He watched as the Norwegian took cover behind one of the large plastic rubbish bins. He joined him as another gunshot rang out.

"Isn't the delivery door open; can't we just backtrack?"

"Not from this direction. He shut it behind him when he followed me out, knowing he had back-up. No external lock, so not pickable. We'll have to do this hard way." The sentences were delivered with just the slightest trace of a Scandinavian accent, and the tell-tale absence of indefinite articles.

"Who was he?" Griffin nodded his head toward the crumpled figure on the steps.

"Not past-tense. He has broken cartilage in his neck but he should live, if the person shooting at us misses him. His name is Luigi Baldassari."

"Brother of Reggio, your Lucarno target."

Two more shots were fired. Griffin watched as Lars scanned the windows of the building opposite. The grey green eyes were calm.  _This guy must have ice water in his veins._

Peering out around the bin, he couldn't see anyone.

"Look up."

_Oh_. On the rooftop opposite the department store, Griffin could see a figure crouched, scanning the alleyway. When he looked back at Lars, he was surprised to see the man's eyes closed. He was muttering something. It took him a moment, but the agent heard the Norwegian say, in a rather English accented mumble, "I know, John; stupid, but unavoidable."

"Who's John?"

That roused the blond man, who looked annoyed. "Just do as I say," delivered with Nordic certainty that would put a Viking to shame. Gesturing to the gunman, "He doesn't know you are armed. At this distance, you can't hit him, but you can scare him into taking cover. So, when I say go, provide covering fire while I cross the alleyway to the window three metres to the right of where we are now."

Griffin looked puzzled. "What's special about that window?"

"It's broken, and therefore will give way when I throw myself through it. Once inside, I will disarm him. I'll give you the all clear when it's safe to leave."

"With respect, sir, that's not how it's going to play out. I'm here to protect you, not the other way around. If anyone tries to take the gunman on, it's going to be me, as I am armed."

"That's where you are wrong, Mr British Agent." Without another word, he just stood up and ran out from behind the bin. Griffin stood up to fire at the man on the roof, knowing that if he didn't, the blond man wouldn't stand a chance.

It played out exactly as the Norwegian said it would. The tall lanky man sprinted across the alley and threw himself straight through the window he had picked out. There was no chance of following him, as the gunman on the roof decided to keep him pinned down behind the bins with a withering fire. Automatic rifle versus handgun was too uneven a balance to try moving, but his imperative to keep the double agent alive was pushing him to the point of risking it.

He reloaded and fired four quick shots at the rooftop gunman, but Griffin realised that he must have moved, because his return fire did not come in reply to the British agent's. That worried him intensely, but then he heard the sound of a rifle hitting the alley way ground in a clatter. He cautiously stood and saw Lars wave once from the roof, and then he vanished. Griffin checked the man slumped by the delivery door. Pulse was steady, but he was clearly out for the count. That's when he saw the knife and picked it up. It was wet with blood.  _Damn. I didn't spot that he was wounded._  He hurried across the alley, picking up the rifle on the way. He found the unconscious gunman on the steps leading down from the roof. He put a call into London- someone local needed to clean this up. He had other duties to see to- and quickly.

oOo

Back at the hotel, he didn't hesitate, but walked straight up and knocked on Lars' door. He figured that if they'd shared a rubbish bin for cover from a sniper, the Norwegian would at least acknowledge his existence. There was no reply, even to the second discrete knock. Worried, he tried the door handle. Locked. Annoyed, he squatted down and picked it in twenty seconds, and then walked in.

Lars didn't even look up. He was in the bathroom with his shirt off, but the door open so he could clearly see the hotel room door in the mirror. And as soon as he locked on those strange grey green eyes glaring at him, Griffin glanced down and saw the blood on his right arm, which was being washed down into the basin.

_So, how do I handle this one?_  Griffin decided English humour might work. "Generally speaking, doing one's own suturing tends to leave a rather messy scar. Might I be of some assistance?"

The Norwegian didn't reply. He pulled his forearm out of the tap's flow, and used the hotel towel to briefly dry the area. He picked up a gauze dressing and pressed down, applying firm pressure. Griffin knew from personal experience that this would hurt like hell, but the blond man's expression did not alter. He came out of the room, sat on the bed, and then nodded his head at the needle laid out on the plastic wrapper, already threaded. Griffin obliged, examining the wound as he removed the dressing. It wasn't too deep, but it was bleeding quite freely. Calling on his own first aid training, Griffin swabbed the area with the betadine from the field kit and started to stitch, somewhat startled by the man's stillness despite the pain he must be feeling.

When he finished, he cleaned the area again, and then bandaged it. The entire operation took less than ten minutes. As soon as he tied off the gauze strip, the blond was off the bed and shrugging his shirt on over the bandages. He then sat in the one chair in the room at the tiny table. Opening his laptop, he began to type, totally ignoring the British agent who was still sitting on the bed. Despite the bandage, his right hand was almost as quick as his left in terms of the keyboard.

"Um, Mr Sigurson, given your injury, you really need to eat something, drink fluids and get some rest."

That earned him a look. "What's your name?"

"Griffin, but if we're going to be shot at together, then you'd better call me by my first name, which is Albert."

For some reason, that name brought the faintest of wistful smiles to the man's face. "I once knew someone called Albert. Didn't talk much, but he was very clever…. I hope the same can be said of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know why Sherlock smiled at the name Albert, read the Ex File chapter entitled Express


	6. On My Own

John walked down the aisle of the supermarket, the wire basket clutched in his right hand. Didn't need a trolley these days; only shopping for one. It still took some getting used to. Lord knows, Sherlock didn't seem to eat that much, and what he did had to be cajoled into him. But, it was surprising how much waste there was now. A lot of food went off before he could get around to eating it.

He could hear Sherlock's reasoning, echoing around his head every time he went shopping. ( _The supermarkets pre-pack excess, John. It's all about profits. You can't buy exactly what quantities you need anymore. They call it 'convenience' packaging, but it's calculated to make you spend more.)_ It was a strange sensation, all these months later, to be hearing that baritone voice in his head, especially since he could count on the fingers of one hand the times they'd ever actually been food shopping together.

But, he understood Sherlock's point now. One portion packs were more expensive per gram than the two serving sized versions. And the family sized packages cheaper still. Feeding himself these days was almost as expensive as it had been for the two of them at Baker Street. Still, there were some advantages. He looked in his basket at the single pint of milk. It would last him exactly two days. No point in buying a quart; it would go off before he could finish it. No more opportunities for Sherlock's repeated statement of the obvious-  _We're out of milk again, John_ , as if he hadn't noticed.

He was in the aisle with jams, chutneys, mustards and so on. A bottle of ketchup now lasted months, whereas before it might make only three weeks. Sherlock liked the combination of sugar, salt, vinegar and tomato. ( _It's an explosion of contrasts, makes most boring food marginally more interesting.)_

He stopped at the jams, searching the shelves for his favourite: Bonne Maman's strawberry preserve. He never varied- it had to be this brand or nothing. One of the reasons he bought it now was because it always brought back a memory- of Sherlock in his suit, standing at the fridge with the jam jar in one hand and a spoon, just shovelling in mouthful after mouthful. They were about to go out on a case, and at the time he'd thought that Sherlock was stocking up on the sugar, knowing that it might be days before he'd deign to eat again.

It was only later, when the case had been solved so quickly that John didn't even have time to say goodbye to Lestrade before they were off back to Baker Street, in fact  _much_  later that night, when John figured out why Sherlock had a craving for sugar.

They'd come home in a taxi, and John remembered catching the first hint of tobacco smoke for almost two months. That led to him accusing his flatmate of smoking a cigarette on the sly at the crime scene.

"So, Sherlock, you solved this without really needing me to even look at those three severed arms with the odd tattoos. You just wanted to keep me busy so you could sneak off, didn't you _?"_

It was the start of realising that whatever rules had been agreed before, Sherlock was not going to play by them now. "If Mycroft can cheat, and not tell us the truth, if he can expose you to that CIA man putting a gun to your head, why should we abide by his rules."

The doctor in him pointed out that someone recovering from pneumonia shouldn't be smoking; it had nothing to do with Mycroft.

There'd been no reply. Sherlock was off in his Mind Palace again, where he had been spending a lot of time since the incident in Irene Adler's bedroom in Belgravia.

The memory of their argument later that night still resonated in his head as he joined the queue at the check-out line. He'd never been able to use the self-service tills since his 'row with a chip and pin machine' and the embarrassment of having to confess it to his flatmate. Now, he had time to kill so he stood in line, patiently waiting his turn and remembered the night of their argument.

The smoking had just made John seethe, all the way home in the taxi. Sherlock  _promised_ , and here he was breaking the rules. What else was he doing? If John couldn't trust him to fulfil his promise on smoking, then what else might he be getting up to behind his back?

As soon as they got home, he'd cooked a meal in silence and delivered it to where Sherlock was sitting working on his laptop. When the brunet looked up at John, the doctor had just glared at him, as if daring him to break this promise, too. When Sherlock sighed, closed the laptop, took the plate from him and started to eat, that's when John realised that something more serious was at issue.  _If he's being obedient on this, it's probably to throw me off the scent of something far worse that he's doing._

When John went to bed that night, he suddenly went pale.  _No, please, not that!_  He recalled how Sherlock's face had been flushed, and his sudden craving for sugar that afternoon. He fished under his bed for the sports kit, and rummaged in the bottom for his rugby shoes. The right one had a bottle stuffed in the sock. A quick squint at the volume in line with the tiny dash made by the blue marker pen -  _whew, it's still the same._  He looked down at the bottle, in a mixture of relief and regret at his lack of trust. The codeine linctus had been necessary to help Sherlock get over the cough and sleep, but he knew the dangers of having a prescription opiate in the house with an addict. He hadn't got rid of it before, just in case the cough returned in the first few days, but if he was able to smoke again, then John should ditch it now.

He went downstairs and into the bathroom, so he could pour it down the sink. That's when he looked at it again in the brighter light. He marched into the living room, where Sherlock was now stretched out on the sofa. "Sherlock, A doctor knows volumes and dosages. Three doses of 15 ml, one per night. There should be more in here, about 30ml more _._ " He was livid and he didn't care if his flatmate knew it. "You took the trouble to move the marker line. Shame you couldn't change my ability to measure dosages."

Sherlock opened his eyes and sat up, looking at John with an unreadable expression. Then he stood, took the bottle out of John's hands, and walked into the kitchen, unscrewing the top as he went. He ran the tap and poured the contents down the plughole.

"You should have disposed of it, John."

"I know, Sherlock, but really? Codeine?  _WHY?"_

"There are some things worse than cigarette smoke."

"I know that, too, but that doesn't answer my question- why?"

"Because I need to think. Mycroft is hiding something important. He's broken the terms of our negotiated agreement- we were supposed to  _share_. Something has happened and he won't tell me what it is. That's  _dangerous_  with Moriarty out there. Dangerous to  _you_. Need I remind you of the CIA gun to your head? When I close my eyes that's all I can see. In the meantime, just when I really need to focus, you've emptied the flat of caffeine, you ration the nicotine patches and won't let me smoke. The alternative to a perfectly reasonable dose of codeine would involve going out to buy cocaine, which for obvious reasons, I think would be …a bit not good. So, just think of it as the lesser of many evils."

John had just sighed and looked away in disappointment. He remembered asking Sherlock whether the results were worth it. Sherlock had frowned and said he needed more data before he could answer the question.

He started putting his groceries onto the belt _. If only I'd known then what was going to happen. I wonder if the whole downward spiral started right there that night, the path that ended up on the Bart's roof._

A wave of sadness came over him. Strange that the pain of loss wasn't going away, despite the passage of time. Too many what ifs to ponder.  _What if I had just had it out with him then and there, got him to talk to me about Irene Adler, and about Moriarty, convinced him to keep me in the loop?_ Instead, John's censure lay like a heavy cloud over Baker Street for the next week. Sherlock just retreated back into silence. And that was the week when Adler started Round Two, without John being made aware of what was going on.

"Excuse me? That will be £7.20, please. Do you need help with the packing?" John sighed and looked at the checkout girl. "No thanks, I can manage on my own."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the memories that John is having are from the times of my stories Crossfire and a bit of the Got My Eye On You series.


	7. Dead Men

The first time someone died, it was an accident.  _Honestly, John. I had no intention; the first one just…happened; a by-product, an unintended consequence, unplanned._  He'd been letting himself into the old office block in the financial district of Moscow each night for the past week, using the time between one and three am to ransack the hard disks of each of the PCs in the room. The software said Microsoft, but it was one of the pirated copies so prevalent in the Russian Federation; even came in plastic shrink wrapped boxes looking like they were straight off the plane from Seattle. No way was he going to risk a USB transferring this virus-ridden crap onto his laptop.

He'd cased the place originally by posing as Lars Sigurson, Moriarty's Norwegian consultant. It was a name known to the Moscovite office. He'd worked hard at establishing the cover story even before he left London. His blond hair and grey green eyes were convincing enough when matched with a Scandinavian-accented Russian. He had talked his way into a meeting with the Moscow office head, claiming that he was working on a money laundering scam that needed cooperation with the Russian bank owned by the Moscow dark angels. It was enough to get him into the office for a good look around. He had promised to return with the money in ten days' time.

In the meantime, he had to break in to do his work  _in situ_ , in the middle of the night when he wouldn't be disturbed. That was the theory anyway. The plan was simple- gut the computers for the details of the network in Moscow, in particular, the dark angels who were keeping them safe from the prying eyes of the few authorities who actually were trying to hold back the tide of organised crime.

Whatever he'd experienced in America, working with the FBI and the CIA had not prepared him for the sheer scale of Moriarty's network in Russia. It was virtually a clandestine government in its own right, sometimes competing but often collaborating with the country's local authorities to siphon millions of roubles out of the legal economy. Whereas in the USA it was a case of tracking down the odd villain in a key position- be it a bank, public office, or company- in Russia, the network actually owned its own banks, city halls and corporations, employing thousands of people.

That made setting up the cascade of in-fighting harder, just because of the sheer scale of things. But, there was one advantage of working in the Russian Federation- it was relatively easy to provoke one faction into fighting another. When you have your own private armies, bloodshed is much more the resort of first choice, rather than last.

That's why he was now hiding inside a filing room, waiting for the security guard to clear the floor- so he could plant the key piece of evidence that would set Moscow's network at the throat of St Petersburg's fiefdom. The traditional enmity between the cities was mirrored in the network; it would not take much for one side to believe the worst of the other- and start shooting.

The armed guard was old enough to have been born in the Soviet era. His plodding passage through the floor could be detected from the squeak of his rubber soled boots. Every night for the past six, he'd made his rounds every two hours, giving Sherlock all the time he needed. And he made so much noise coming up the stairs that he could always get out of the way in plenty of time. Downstairs, three more guards with guns watched CCTV cameras on the stairwells, lift lobbies, the back and front entrances. Sherlock had copied the digital feeds and was looping them through the circuits, so the screens would not show him entering by the roof and getting into this office.

As the double doors at the far end of the office closed behind the guard, Sherlock was already in motion. He settled back into place and re-opened the file. He referred to his sheet of paper, being careful to type the sub-routine into the email that would plant the virus which would be detected by the next morning's security scan. It was tailor-made; a Trojan horse programme that would open the door to file theft, and it had St Petersburg's characteristic coding. Once found, the Moscovites would retaliate, and then the series of embedded files would kick into action in both St Petersburg and Moscow. He estimated it would take a week at most before guns were used instead of keystrokes.

_(It's easier this way, John. In America, everything took FOREVER because it all had to be 'by the book' and lead to successful prosecutions. I used to think the British security services were constrained, but in the US, the criminals use the legal system to stymie law enforcement so well that the FBI and CIA are obsessed with due process. Thank God for the lawlessness of the Russians- I can wrap this up in a matter of a month. That will mean the two biggest operations are down- only thirty more to go before I can become un-dead and think of returning to you.)_

Perhaps because he was having one of his internal conversations with John, or maybe it was just that he had not slept properly for the six nights when he was at this work- whatever the reason, he did not hear the arrival of the intruder.

One moment he was closing down a programming string, the next he was pulled right out of his chair, by a man whose arm was across his neck, his right hand with a knife pressing it against Sherlock's throat. There was a loud shout- остановитесь - злоумышленник!* – almost certain to recall the armed security guard.

The Bartitsu manoeuver he used to dislodge the offending arm did nothing to stop the point of the knife dragging across the side of his neck, but it did mean that the burly Russian was now at the mercy of the younger man he had just attacked, caught in a headlock with Sherlock's right hand across his mouth to stop a half stifled shout.

He dragged his attacker back into the filing room, where he had hidden earlier from the security guard. His stranglehold against the man's windpipe was having an effect, and his struggles grew weaker. He pushed the door with a foot, but it did not quite catch. He felt something wet and warm on his neck, as the knife clattered to the ground, from the man's numb fingers. As the man sagged and he let the winded assailant slump to the floor, Sherlock heard a call from the guard, " _Alexi?"_ at the doorway into the office he'd just vacated

Sherlock faced a conundrum- the first assailant would recover consciousness if left untended. But, the security guard would soon investigate the filing room- which had no other exit. He was bottled up, caught like a rat in a trap. He sighed.

He picked up the knife, pulled the winded man to his feet, and grabbed him in the same lock-hold as before. He knew that Russians had the same macho tendency as Americans to shoot first and ask questions later. So, he used the first man as a shield and pushed him in front, through the door, and almost into the back of the security guard, who was bent over the computer screen trying to figure out what was going on. He whirled around as Sherlock put the knife to his assailant's throat, and said quietly, "подавите оружие". But the guard did not put his gun down, growling "Вы подавляете нож".

To break the deadlock, Sherlock began to move slowly towards the door, keeping his hostage between him and the gun. Somewhere along the way, he realised that his hostage had stopped resisting. In fact, he'd stopped breathing. Staggering slightly under the weight of a now dead body, Sherlock reached the door. The security guard kept his gun up as he fumbled at his belt for the radio that would connect him to the front desk and help. Sherlock couldn't risk that call being made. He shoved the body at the guard, and attacked. The gun went off, but the body that took the bullet was already dead. Sherlock did not hesitate- he had no choice if he wanted to get out alive before the rest of the office's security arrived. So, he slashed the knife across the neck of the guard, severing both carotid arteries. He'd be dead before the others could reach him, and would not be able to identify him.

He pushed his piece of paper into the pocket of the shot man, and put the knife in the hand of the man who had attacked him - it might confuse the first people on the scene; let them think it was a disagreement.

He calmly walked over to the computer, finished typing his code and shut the system down. Righting the chair, he then walked to the far door of the office and slipped through the double doors. He could hear the other guards arriving on the scene behind him as he ran up the stairs to the roof, where he had gained access and would now make his escape.

oOo

Now back in the relatively safe confines of the third class tourist hotel in a seedy area of Moscow's suburbs, Sherlock was trying to clean the knife wound across the side of his neck. Superficial, but still bleeding a lot. He'd used bottled water to irrigate the wound. He fished in the first aid kit for an antiseptic wipe to clean the area around the wound, then opened the special bandage. He'd got a dozen of these off the Americans- used a special chitosan compound to stop bleeding fast. It was still a military patent, but he knew that he could not risk a doctor or hospital visit. ( _You'd approve, John, used in Afghanistan first and now coming on stream for normal consumers- one of the few good things to emerge from all those battlefield wounds.)_

It had been a close call. ( _The first one was an accident; I didn't mean to choke off his oxygen supply to the point where he actually died. It was inconvenient; I wanted him to be able to walk out with me at least as far as the stairs, where I planned to dump him unconscious. But, with hindsight, it worked better this way.)_

" _And just how could you think that killing someone was better than leaving him alive?" _John's attitude toward killing was …perplexing. On the one hand, the ex-army doctor had shot Jeff Hope through the heart for trying to tempt Sherlock to take a poison pill. On the other hand, his flatmate's medical instincts were to save every patient, irrespective of whether they were a murder suspect or a best friend. Sherlock had summed it up to Lestrade on that first night, even before he knew it was John who had pulled the trigger. "Acclimatised to violence, he didn't fire until I was in immediate danger, though, so strong moral principle." Somehow, on John, the contradictions didn't seem a problem. He wondered if John would be so forgiving of Sherlock's version. Probably not.

_(But, it will actually work to convince the Moscovites. I planted the cypher code sheet in his pocket- it will look like the guard interrupted a St Petersburg mole, they fought and killed each other. This way the two hubs of Moriarty's network will be at each other's throats faster. A good result, John, really.)_

The only surprise of the evening, really, is that this is the first time that Sherlock has ever actually killed two men, even in self-defence. Apart from the very few times he 'borrowed' John's weapon, he wasn't armed with a gun in the UK unless he took it off a criminal- and even then, Lestrade had made it clear that there would be 'issues' arising from shooting someone, even in self-defence. Knife wounds ( _Always in self-defence John, you know I don't carry the knife; I use it to pin the bills to the mantelpiece, or the Cluedo board to the wall_ ), beatings, sometimes a criminal ended up dead from a chase, but he'd never used a weapon to kill a man, nor had he ever throttled a person to death.

What surprised him is that he felt no different. It was just a process, done without emotion and without any particular personal animosity. He felt no regret. He found that he was more curious than anything. He'd have liked to examine the bodies of the two men at leisure, perhaps in a morgue, to see the actual extent of the damage done, and how it had been inflicted.

The only other thought that occurred to him was that he was sure John would be disappointed in his reaction to the deaths.

oOo

The next time it happened, it was with malice of forethought, premeditated, pure and simple murder. He felt no compunction at all. The man in question was Boris Yerinilko. He was a big man, more a weightlifter in physique than what you might expect from an assassin. Sherlock had recognised him from Baker Street; he was the "workman" hired by Mrs Hudson to do some the minor repairs. Simple, of course, and with all the hallmarks of Moriarty's warped sense of humour. Keep an eye on her, to be able to deliver the threat-one of the "three bullets, three gunmen; three victims" that Moriarty used to incentivise Sherlock to jump.

Sherlock took his time- four days and three nights of stalking in Yekaterinberg. Before he left Moscow, he'd managed to pick up an old, but well cared for Makarov pistol and ammunition, so common in Russia that it would be almost impossible to trace. The serial number had been removed, probably decades before.

He did the deed in one of the side streets. The man was walking alone, it was late and he was a little drunk, so not paying a great deal of attention. The weather had turned very cold; winter was coming early to the Urals, so there were few pedestrians on the street. Dressed like any sensible local in a great coat and furry hat, walking with his collar turned up against the wind, Sherlock simply came out of a building doorway, walking towards Boris. When they were about to pass one another, he stopped, and said quietly in English, "Good Evening." In surprise, Boris looked up at him, and then in the split second when he recognised Sherlock, the tall brunet closed the gap between them and shot him in the heart.

( _I know, John. You wouldn't approve. You didn't object when I threw Nielsen out of the window at Baker Street the first time, but I do recall you weren't happy by the time I defenestrated him the fourth time. Tough man- took a lot to break a few bones to make up for hurting Mrs Hudson. I never did "half kill" him as you accused me of doing that last night in the lab at Barts- he was fit enough to return to duty that night when Bond Air didn't take off from Heathrow. But, I never told you that, did I? Well, Mycroft was being funny; 'need to know' and all that._

_So, I don't suppose you will understand why I killed Boris. Strange, I thought there would be some feeling attached to it; a sort of closure, maybe a little sense of revenge? But, there was…nothing, nothing at all. I think that I have become empty, a hollow vessel. What little sense I once had of what was good and not good seems to have vanished. I seem to have left the better part of me behind, with you. Perhaps this is what Moriarty meant, when he said he would burn the heart out of me._

In his mind, there was no answer from John. He wondered if there ever would be, should he ever get back to Baker Street, and should he ever be brave enough to tell the truth about what he did while he was away.  _No matter, you're alive- that's all that counts now to a dead man._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: "остановитесь - злоумышленник!" = Stop Intruder!; "подавите оружие" = Put the gun down; "Вы подавляете нож" = Put the knife down  
> ________________________________________


	8. The Phone

John opened the package carefully. He recognised Mrs Hudson's handwriting on the front where she had addressed it to his new flat. His first reaction when he saw it was guilt.  _I should have kept in touch._ In fact, he had not seen her, spoken with her or even written since he'd left Baker Street more than four months ago. Every time he thought about her, he couldn't help but think about Sherlock, too, and that hurt, so he tried to push her out of his mind, as well. He knew it was wrong, and unfair. She had loved Sherlock with an maternal attachment, been willing to put up with his oddities, his tantrums and the inevitable consequences for the flat- from bullet holes in the wall to chemical burns on the kitchen table. She had even been willing to forgive him the night that Moriarty's first bomb went off across the street and decimated her beloved Baker Street.

So, it was some trepidation that he opened the padded envelope and peeked inside. There was a note and a bubble-wrapped object. He opened the lilac coloured writing paper, and read

_Dearest John_

_I hope this finds you well and that your new flat is comfortable. I won't pretend that I don't miss you. The two of you filled more for me than just the flat upstairs, but you know that, so I won't go on and get us both upset all over again. People sent by Sherlock's brother came and cleared the flat some time ago and took all of his things away. I've had workmen in to do some repairs (yes, I am still cross about the damage to the wall; why on earth did you ever let him find your gun?) and one of them found a loose floorboard in his bedroom. Underneath it, this was found. It brought back a lot of memories- some good, some not so good. You know, my bins still have dents in them! According to ebay, it's worth a lot of money. I thought you might want to either keep it or sell it. In any case, you know I don't need a mobile phone, so I thought you should have it._

_If you are ever in the area, you know that I would love to see you._

_With love,_

_Una Hudson_

He pulled the bubble wrap off the phone. THE phone, the Vertu that had belonged to Irene Adler. Too many memories came flooding back: watching Sherlock on his bed that Christmas Eve with the open box containing the phone, when John overheard him say to his brother that she would be found dead that night. Or the first time Sherlock tried to unlock the password with the number of John's blog viewers, when the counter got stuck ( … _maybe you've been hacked!)_. Then there was the night when Mrs Hudson pulled it from her bra after hiding it there from that CIA man. ( _Safest place I know, John_ ) Of course, months later, Irene had returned and Sherlock had tried to trick her into unlocking it, when she got him to break that code. John had never been told the full meaning of that code, nor what had happened that night. Sherlock just told him that it was over, he'd broken the password, handed over the phone to Mycroft and that "The Woman has been beaten." When he had pressed for details, he'd been told he could say no more for security reasons. ( _I never want to hear her name again, John.)_

But, perhaps the most lasting memory was the last time he saw the phone. Months later, when Mycroft pushed it across the table in Speedy's and told him to lie to Sherlock about Irene's death.

He said at the time that Sherlock had despised the woman, that he didn't feel things that way.  _But what did I know? I never dared to ask him what he really felt. I was too afraid that he might say he cared for her. I was jealous; she was right._

He'd really, really struggled with that.  _Why did I lie to you? You deserved better. I should have told you the truth_. That he didn't was just another sign of things going wrong between them in those last few months. But, Sherlock's reaction to his statement about Irene being in America surprised him. He knew that his friend would deduce the lie, but instead of challenging him, he just let the lie stand. All he wanted was the phone. There was no emotion at all. He must have known she was dead, but he was not prepared to talk to John about it.  _Why did you do that, Sherlock? More important, why did I let you get away with it?_

To be honest, John had been relieved when Mycroft told him that she had been beheaded in Pakistan. Not a nice way to go, for sure. But, he'd never trusted her, never liked the games she played with Sherlock's emotions. She was dangerous, a toxic mix of intelligence, manipulation and pure sexual dominance. Far too much of a threat to someone as emotionally inexperienced and innocent as Sherlock was. She brought out John's most protective instincts about his friend. So, at the time, he had not regretted lying to protect Sherlock. It was what a friend did.  _I was an idiot- a selfish idiot._

As Big Ben tolled in the New Year, he'd asked Sherlock "So, she's alive; how do we feel about that?" Now, looking at the phone in his hand, he realised he should have asked how he felt about her death, too. John would not regret her death, no – not one little bit. But, maybe, if he could have convinced Sherlock to talk to him about what her death meant to him, then it would have built a bridge, a way of talking about his feelings. When Moriarty returned, a willingness to speak about feelings between them might have led somewhere else other than the rooftop at Barts.

John would sell the phone. Otherwise, its presence would remind him day after day of just how much he had failed his best friend.


	9. All the Tea in Tibet

" _Tea_?"

A simple request that Sherlock must have heard thousands of times from John. Lately, he'd made a habit of remembering, in strict chronological order, each occasion- the circumstances, the meaning and how the requests had changed over the time he'd spent with his flatmate.

This one was the very first time. Seven days after he moved in, Sherlock had been stretched out on the sofa in his thinking position, hands steepled under his chin. He was working out the chemical reactions involved in the Rhesus factor in blood types, and whether that could conceivably make a difference to how blood left at a crime scene coagulated. Chemical formulae of complex proteins and exposure to air made it an interesting mental exercise. If it did then it could help solve crimes faster, without having to wait for blood samples to be typed.

He'd not replied to his flatmate's question. And John took a couple of days to ask again. Each time he did, Sherlock did not reply. Twenty three days after he moved into 221b, a cup of tea appeared anyway on the coffee table beside where Sherlock was typing something into his blog. He ignored it and let it go cold. He could see without even lifting the cup that there was too much milk in it and the tea was too strong. Not to mention being made with a tea bag.

John didn't let that deter him. Over the next month, almost every day another cup mysteriously appeared at some point. Each time, Sherlock could deduce that the formula had changed. Variations of strength. Some with milk, sometimes without. Once with lemon. He ignored them all. Nothing was said; the cups disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared.

When Sherlock wanted tea, he made his own. He brought the caddy of whole leaf tea from his room, and made the tea in a proper pot, drinking it from a small cup he also brought from his bedroom. He only did it in the middle of the night, and always washed up and removed the evidence before John woke up.

During the third month, he noticed that a box of loose leaf tea had joined John's supplies in the kitchen cupboard. It was a Darjeeling, single estate first flush, just like the tea in his bedroom caddy. That made him smile. He deduced that John had discovered Sherlock's taste in tea when he emptied the rubbish bin and found the used tea leaves in there. The next time a cup appeared, he picked it up and sniffed, then took a sip.  _Ugh, no sugar._  He left the rest in the cup.

The next day he was at the kitchen table working on an experiment. Behind him he heard John making the tea and realised it was taking him longer than usual. While he scrutinised the stained cyanobacteria in the sample of toxic algal bloom from a reservoir in the Lee Valley that featured in a recent murder, Sherlock's mind also put visual steps to each of the sounds he was hearing behind him. They ended with the sound of a spoon stirring the cup. When the cup appeared on his left, by the slide box, he took a look. The right scent, so the right tea. The right colour, so the right strength and volume of milk. He took a sip. Yes. Better, but still not right.

" _Two_."

John replied, " _two what_?"

" _Teaspoons of sugar_." Sherlock did not look up from the microscope.

" _Oh_."

A few days later when they came back late from a rooftop surveillance exercise that netted a forger, John asked again, " _Tea_?"

"Yes, please." Sherlock watched the smile blossom on John's face.

oOo

_Thwack!_  The willow wand struck the back of his neck with a sting that went straight through the thin red fabric of his robe.

"Kha khar sdod."

Sherlock had learned that word rather well.  _Silence_. It was required of all entrants to the monastery. The only one allowed to speak for the first month after someone arrived was the abbot. He wielded the willow stick to punish transgressions. Compared with the nine others seeking entrance, Sherlock escaped much of the abbot's ministrations. Unlike the others, he did not mind the cold, the silence, the minimal food. He did not complain. Privations were not difficult for him. Two of the initial intake abandoned the effort and went away. "This is too much like prison" one of the leavers shouted in West Bengali. "If I wanted punishment, I'd have let them put me in prison."

Sherlock had practiced voluntary mutism as a child, once managing to stay silent for seven months. But here, where he had no reason to talk, he occasionally slipped and voiced out loud a reply to something that John said in his head. That is what must have happened to earn him this latest beating.

It was a strange place. A small break-away group, set up by a monk who had only one entry requirement- you could only join if you were a criminal willing to renounce the life of crime. For the first month, the entrant would not be spoken to, nor would he be acknowledged by anyone but the abbot. Each was robed, told to keep the cowls up at all time, and their faces masked. They were told to keep silent and never look anyone in the eye. They could not converse.

"You must all learn to shed the past. No name, no voice; you are not a person. Let go what holds you back to the life you are leaving."

It suited his purpose. The crisis had come for him fourteen months into his campaign against Moriarty's network. The constant demands, the relentless pace of breaking cell after cell. There was never any 'down time'. His physical health had deteriorated and he got careless. Then he got a knife wound in Mumbai, which he sutured, bandaged and forgot about, until it got infected. IV antibiotics at a local hospital solved the infection, and they booted him out. But he was too tired and weak to resume the campaign. Sherlock realised that he needed a break. But where? and how could he just…stop? He knew that if he tried to do so in a place where other temptations were available, then he would eventually succumb to the siren call of drugs.

So, he'd cut and run north. Sherlock bought a book so he could learn the rudiments of Tibetan on the plane from Mumbai to Katmandu, and on his week-long walk across the border into Tibet. Not that he had needed it yet for speaking. The novices spent their days reading the texts in silence and memorising it. The abbot explained to them why.

"When you have learned what you need to know, you will leave this place and teach others. You must not only live the life by example, you will need to be able to read and write the sacred texts. Like a stone dropped into the pool of humanity, you must create ripples. Only this will save you from being reincarnated as a lesser being. This is your chance to improve yourself."

_It's called restorative justice, John. The British make a half-hearted attempt at it; here it really works._

When he demonstrated to the abbot that he could write the text complete having read it only once, he was left alone to practice the other things they were being taught- mostly meditation techniques. The only other activity allowed was exercise- a strange form of martial arts, conducted in complete silence. Sherlock used it as a form of physiotherapy, regaining his strength carefully in the high altitude conditions.

With little else to fill the time, he found other things to occupy his mind. Like remembering in strict date order the many times John had made him a cup of tea.

_Yes, John, I am now drinking green tea. I prefer Indian tea, but it's not available here. And the only milk available is yak, which is disgusting. Even your builder's tea would taste revolting with it. There's no sugar here. They have a rather aesthetic life style. You'd miss the biscuits._

oOo

Today was the twenty seventh day of his stay. According to the Tibetan calendar, which was based on the lunar phases rather than the sun, this would be the day that the abbot would speak to him for the first time. After the morning scripture reading, Sherlock was tapped on the back of his neck by the abbot's willow switch, and beckoned to follow him.

Once seated cross legged in the abbot's unheated room, the old man pushed the robe's cowl off Sherlock's head and removed the mask. He kept his eyes down on the floor as the abbot ran his fingers through the long dark curls. "Tomorrow, this will all be shaved off."

He then watched surreptitiously the elderly man prepare green tea. The earthenware teapot was old and shiny from continual use. It brought to mind a particularly ancient tea pot in a museum, and how the love of it had cost Soo Lin her life.

The abbot was now allowing the tea leaves to steep in the hot water. He spoke, and Sherlock was startled to hear English words.

"Why does the tea pot attract your attention?"

Seeing the younger man's surprise, the abbot continued, "I spent time studying at SOAS in London, many years ago. I know you are English."

That made Sherlock feel uncomfortable. The Norwegian he'd spoken for more than a year, and the Norwegian-accented English when it was necessary, they were an integral part of his camouflage. His persona was not English; he'd been silent for a month. How could the man know?

"You said, 'Yes, please.' Out loud, you didn't know you had. You are talking to someone who is not here. And it was in English. The soul reveals itself in unexpected utterances."

Sherlock nodded, still not making eye contact. He didn't know whether it was permitted.

As if reading his thoughts, the elderly man asked again. "The tea pot. Tell me why it matters to you."

"It reminds me of a young Chinese woman who died trying to preserve an ancient tea pot that looked much like this one. In London, she would not flee her conservation work, even at great risk to herself. I could not save her."

"Is that what you do? Save people?"

"No. Not intentionally. I solve puzzles."

"You are a puzzle. Can you solve yourself?"

Sherlock went still as he contemplated the man's question. He watched as the older man poured the green tea into two old earthenware cups, and hand one to Sherlock.

"Drink."

Sherlock obeyed. It was surprisingly good. Refreshing, not too hot. Much better than the version he'd been drinking so far at the monastery. A month away from any form of sugar had dulled his appetite for it. The strange Tibetan herb soups that formed the bulk of their meals, along with brown rice were not always palatable, but at least they were plain. He avoided the Yak butter and milk; neither agreed with his digestive system. Where most of the other newcomers lost weight, he didn't; new muscle formed by the exercise added weight instead.

The man sitting across from him emptied the tea pot, first topping up Sherlock's cup, then his own. Then in a blindingly fast motion, the abbot flung the earthenware tea pot against the stone wall, smashing it into pieces.

Sherlock did not move, but he was startled. "Why?"

"Because you must learn to let go of your memories. A tea pot is just mud in a different form. We are just ashes, water and minerals, in a different form. Let it go back to what it once was."

While Sherlock considered this, the old man continued. "Like you. You had a name once, you have had several since. For one moon, you have had no name. Now I give you another. It will be your name for as long as you are here. When you have shed its meaning, then you will be ready to leave."

A pair of grey green eyes looked up into the almond shaped dark eyes of the old man, who smiled. "I have named you  _Rlung lang po mthong mang po_."

Sherlock started to unpick the individual words to see if there was a meaning. The abbot beat him to it. "It means 'Angry one who sees too much'. You will be ready to leave when you learn to let go of the anger, and to stop trying to see so much."

As he drained the cup of the last dregs of green tea, Sherlock wondered if such a thing was even remotely possible.


	10. Darjeeling Tea

John started to empty the supermarket trolley onto the belt; Mary was talking to the check-out girl, and preparing to bag the groceries. It was the first time he'd gone shopping with her. Their relationship was still in the "getting to know you well" stage.

But, from the very beginning, the day she turned up as the agency nurse receptionist at the practice, his eye had been drawn to her. Not just because she was pretty, self-confident and funny. Nor was it because, for once, in her company he didn't feel too short. Too many women in too high heels made him self-conscious about his height. But, there was also something about Mary that intrigued him right at the start.

A couple of weeks later, he got the courage to ask her out. She gave him  _that_ look, the one he'd started to associate with her. He'd felt it before, of course he had. He was used to being read by Sherlock Holmes, after all. Mary's look was different. It was a bit more hidden, careful- even cautious. The first time she'd done it, he couldn't help but think,  _trust issues._

They'd dated casually for a few months. He didn't tell her that he stopped seeing anyone else. He didn't want to frighten her away. Because the more he got to know her, the more he liked her. She was  _different_. Most British women were…he didn't know how to put it. A little too predictable? A little  _boring?_ Maybe that was it. Mary was special. She'd spent a lot of her life overseas. A nurse with various  _Medecins sans Frontieres_  missions. Africa, the Far East, even a few short tours in the Middle East and Latin America. As a result, she was more interesting than anyone he'd ever dated.

He recognised a kindred spirit. When he asked her why the travel, she'd just laughed. "I  _know_  I am an adrenaline junkie. Couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in the hierarchy of the NHS. Too boring for words."

"So, what brought you back to the UK?"

She smiled. "Tick, tock- I'm over forty, John. Time to stop acting like a globe-trotting backpacker."

He smirked into his beer. He had been pleased to discover that she liked a pint as much as he did. It made a casual drink after work easy, and they had slipped into a routine of a Friday night at the local, nearest to the practice. "So, are you  _bored_  now?"

She gave him one of her mischievous smiles that he had come to really appreciate. "Why do you think I'm an agency worker? It gives me the variety I need to keep sane."

"Uh oh, does that mean you're going to get bored with me and shove off to find someone more exciting?"

She raised her glass, and caught his blue eyes over the rim of her own. "To changing the habits of a life time. Maybe it is time to settle down. Do you think that the practice would like a full time permanent employee instead of an agency nurse?"

"I'm sure you could make a good case. Of course, I was thinking more about you and me than the work, but hey, it's a start if I know you aren't going to disappear one day because you've taken another position with a more  _interesting_  employer."

She was like that. Teasing, mischievous- a real firecracker. And clever, she certainly kept him on his toes. And as the good night kisses turned into something more serious, he knew he was falling in love. Occasionally, he caught her looking at him with something of a surprised, almost startled look. When he called her out on it, she smirked. "You do surprise me, Doctor John Watson. Unexpectedly. Delightfully." He'd been spending more and more time at her flat, even managing a sleep-over a few times when he was just too tired to go back to his own. So, here he was doing something as domestic as the weekly shop with her.

He reached into the trolley and pulled out a box of Waitrose Finest leaf tea- second flush Darjeeling. He stopped to read the box, and remembered another person who liked that sort of tea. He wondered what Sherlock would have made of Mary.  _No, on second thought, I don't want to imagine that. Sherlock, just SHUT UP._   _I don't want to hear your dozen reasons why she isn't the right woman for me. You never did anything other than sabotage my love life._ That said, his flatmate's assessment of the women John had dated was almost unerringly correct. In hindsight, Sherlock's interruptions and criticisms had saved John more than once from making a mistake in a relationship.

"Hey, earth to John?- you're not finished."

Startled, he put the packet of tea on the check-out belt and looked back in the trolley. "Right, sorry," and resumed unloading.

oOo

He was making her a  _proper_  cup of tea- not the usual grab-the-nearest-teabag and stuff it into the cup kind of tea. It was Sunday morning, and he was in his bathrobe, over his pyjamas. They'd been living together more or less for a couple of weeks. Characteristically, she was the one to ask when his lease was up, and would he be moving in?

He'd smiled. "When's yours up?"

Her face said it all. "John, I love you to bits, but your bachelor digs are just so…basic. When my lease is up, we can get a new place that we both get to choose."

So this was a celebratory cup of tea. He got the proper tea pot out and the box of Darjeeling, measuring out the loose-leaf tea carefully. He put the kettle on, but turned it off just before it got to the boil. Sherlock had taught him that.  _John, don't cook the tea. Heat releases the aroma and flavour, but too much breaks down the leaf structure and releases more acids- makes it bitter_. The biochemistry involved in tea apparently kept the consulting detective occupied when body parts were in short supply.

John brought the tea pot to the coffee table in front of the sofa where Mary was sat. As the tea steeped, he apologised. "Wish you had bought first flush, rather than this. It's not as good."

"Why?"

"Darjeeling is the leaf of a tea plant from a small district in West Bengal, but unlike all the other Indian teas, it's actually from the smaller leafed Chinese tea bush rather than the rest in India which are Assam species. It's called the Champagne of teas because it has to come from a small area of designated tea estates- no one else can call their tea that name. It's described as a black tea, but it isn't; it's less than 90% oxidised, so technically more of an oolong than a black tea. First flush means that the tiny new leaves are harvested first, in early March after the spring rains. It's delicate, special. This second flush version is harvested after the June rain, and it's fuller bodied, more robust because the leaves are older."

She looked at him with amazement. "Wow- you know a lot about tea."

He poured a thin stream of the amber coloured liquid into the first cup, holding the spout about six inches above the cup. "This lets the oxygen get to it." He looked down at the cup as it filled and said quietly, "I knew nothing about tea, even though I had been drinking it all my life. But I knew a man who did know a lot about tea, and he told me  _everything_  about it, including the actual chemistry involved in withering the leaves so they have just the right amount of moisture to make the very best tea in the world. Every time I use a tea bag now I can hear him telling me, 'John, you are using the crushed up powder and floor sweepings that no one should sell as tea, and that's why it tastes so disgusting.'" He mimicked an upper class posh voice that only he could hear in his head.

She giggled. "So, why do you keep using a tea bag?"

John shrugged and took his first sip. "Maybe because I want to be reminded of him lecturing me."

Mary sat back and drew in the aromas of her cup. John never ceased to surprise her.


	11. Being an Idiot

"Because you're an idiot."

This time, instead of hearing John's words in his head, Sherlock voiced the statement himself, and the words echoed a bit against the stone walls of the cell. It was the answer to the question he had just asked himself for the hundredth time:  _why am I here?_

_You risk your life to prove you're clever._ That was his inner John talking, the Mind Palace avatar he'd taken with him. It brought a memory back of giggling at a crime scene. And when he'd lied and said that he was biding his time and knew that John would turn up.

Sherlock sighed. This time, there was no hope that John would turn up. And why would he? Sherlock was locked in a cell over 5,000 miles away from London, and the real John believed him to have been dead for almost eighteen months.

_It's how you get your kicks, isn't it?_  His avatar John was proving to be a more tenacious talker than he would have liked, especially when it came to criticising Sherlock for his latest debacle. He mumbled his reply through lips that were swollen and bloody, "not this time, John. This time I am an idiot, I am not clever, and I deserve what I'm getting." The kick in the ribs that had been administered by the guard when he left was a wry irony, under the circumstances.

It didn't matter if anyone overheard him. The chance of anyone in this hell hole understanding English was pretty remote. He was a Mandarin speaker, but the local Harbin accent had its own unique character, and it was hard to understand.

Not that he'd needed an extensive vocabulary when nearly every word was accompanied by a blow of some sort. He wasn't being held here to extract information; he was part of a kidnap for ransom exercise. Communication with the prisoners was minimal, and merely an exercise of power. There were three other white Europeans being held in the same set of cells, buried deep in a building that had once been a communist party office, but then sold off to a local businessman. Trouble was, his business proved to be a front office for a triad. The snakehead group was just one of the parts of Qiao Si's triad that locked down the Heilongjiang Province. From construction corruption to drugs, and money laundering, the triad took advantage of Harbin's location. The eighth largest city in China, it was the heartland of industrial north- and the closest major urban area to the Russian border. So, inevitably, it had a close relationship with the Russian mafia. And that was where Sherlock had made his first miscalculation. He had assumed this would be a  _good_  working relationship, when in fact, it was absolutely dire. So much so that when he made his approach as Lars Sigurson speaking on behalf of the Russian remnants of Moriarty's network, their reaction was to throw him in a cell.

In mandarin, an interrogator asked him who he should contact to be ransomed.

"No one."

"Then you are a dead man."

"I've been dead for almost eighteen months." He couldn't help but laugh at saying this.

The man looked at him suspiciously. "If you are who you say you are, then reach out to your network in Russia, and get them to pay the ransom."

Sherlock was still laughing. "The network was destroyed more than nine months ago."

The northern Manchurians were so different from the round faced southerners; this one's expression was totally unreadable in the flat plane of his face, as he said, "Guizi*, you have a night to think of someone in Russia who might pay. Without a name tomorrow morning, then you are truly dead."

The other three being held were in fact Russians. For the first night in captivity, the four hostages were kept in the same cell. He learned a lot about them; they learned nothing about him. Each was a local representative of one of the Russian  _bratva._  They'd come in 2008 when the Russian Business Network, a notorious cybercrime coalition, had to leave Russia in a hurry. The computer geeks slipped across the border and set up in Harbin. There were precedents; during the Russian civil war in 1917, more than 100,000 white Russian soldiers had come south to occupy Harbin, whilst escaping the communist armies across the Amur River. Russian churches and schools sprang up and the town enjoyed a startling growth- until the Japanese invasion and the establishment of Manchukwo. Even so, it was Russian troops that "liberated" the town from the Japanese, and they took possession until late 1946. It was also the reason why the Russians spoke Chinese and the Triad snakehead men spoke Russian. Every year hordes of Russian tourists came to the town for summer, and they were the principal audience for Harbin's Ice Festival. One of the benefits of cross border détente was an ability to commit crimes against one another without need of translation. None of the three Russians was particularly worried- at least, not in the presence of the competition. Each was sure their  _bratva_  would come up with the goods.

When the next morning, the guard asked Lars Sigurson for the name that would give him a chance to live until a ransom could be extracted, he got one. But, then he'd dragged the Norwegian out of the cell and stripped off his clothes. A close examination of his skin was then conducted in the presence of his superior.

" **纹身** "* The guard stepped back and then kicked Sherlock hard in the ribs.

The older man watching the examination was shaking his head. "Liar! If you were a member of the  _Tambovskya bratva_ , there would be evidence- a skull tattoo."

In Russian, Sherlock replied. "Я не член bratva. Я - консультант."

The result was this- stuffed into this smaller room, just a stone box no more than two meters wide and a little more in length. No windows. A single dim light fixture recessed into the ceiling, which came on occasionally. He guessed it must have once been a storeroom. Now it was storing him, although what for and how long, he could not say.

The guards who "visited" were rotated but he had no idea what time was passing between their visits. The current one used a piece of stiff hosepipe as his preferred method of conversation. Not for the first time in his life, Sherlock was glad that he had a high threshold for pain. That thought sent him down a corridor in his mind palace. His avatar John followed him, tutting as he went. This was the doctor John, the one who fretted about how little Sherlock seemed to register pain.  _It's your transport's way of telling you to stop before there is a crash. Why don't you ever listen?_ Sherlock turned a corner and was confronted by the sight of his brother standing in his way.

Now it was Mycroft's turn to berate him. The stern frown and the censorious stance were so familiar. One hand on the waistcoat pocket, a finger caressing the gold half hunter watch ensconced in that pocket, this Mycroft was his arch enemy- the one who told him to stop being stupid, that he was being slow, a great disappointment.  _You have no one to blame for this fiasco but yourself, little brother. If only you had listened to reason. But then, you never do. Shame really._

Right now, Sherlock would have been happy to see that scowl for real. Anything so familiar would bring its own comfort; even the inevitable chastisement accompanying it would be a kind of reassurance that he was not so horribly alone.

"Alone is what I have; alone protects them." Did he say that out loud? He wasn't sure. Whatever happened now to him, Sherlock could cling to the comfort that he would not be used to get at his brother, to influence his choices. His captors had no idea who he really was.

He was done with being a pawn. He had shed Griffin, leaving behind in Mumbai the watchdog Mycroft had following him.  _Sorry, brother mine. Here be dragons, and I can't implicate you in what's going to happen: best you think of me as dead._

And he had finally managed to put so much distance between himself and John that no one would think of using the man as a lever against him. Everyone who mattered thought he was dead, or as good as dead. He had once laughed at John's love of crap movies on a zombie theme, never realising that one day he would himself be one of the living dead.

Locked in this little cell, he had time for reflection. Despite underestimating the time it would take to destroy the network, he'd managed to do most of what he'd set out from Barts' roof to do. Moriarty was dead. Most of his network had been dismantled- at least two thirds. Once he had finished with China, there would have been a few stops to be made in Eastern Europe, but then it was supposed to be over, thanks to the work of Lars Sigurson. Now, because of one stupid error, he was quite likely to be killed. Shame he couldn't manage to find the strength to laugh at his own stupidity. It was his own fault that he'd landed up in this cell. And it had started so well…

oOo

"Have you decided?"

The abbot's question was a familiar one. He'd asked Sherlock the same thing every morning for the past three days. The tall thin man in the orange and red robe kept his head bowed. "Not yet, perhaps tomorrow."

Later, when he was supposed to be meditating along with the other three new monks, Sherlock considered the question again. Was he ready to leave the monastery? The breakaway order had a deceptively simple approach: take criminals in as novices, strip them of their names and their sense of individual identity by cloaking their bodies and masking their faces for a month. Then take six months to train them rigorously, subjecting them to a harsh regime of order, discipline and instruction. If they stayed the course, then the abbot would decide when they should leave. The order was not a closed, contemplative group. As soon as they were ready, the monks were expected to leave, to go out into society, immerse themselves in communities and be an example to others, to live an honest life.

Sherlock had hidden himself in the small hilltop monastery to recover from his wounds, and to rebuild his strength, as far away from the temptations that he knew would prove irresistible, once he stopped his crusade against Moriarty's network. The abbot had been impressed with the speed with which the novice he called  _Rlung lang po*_  had taken to the teachings. In the abbot's view, he was ready to leave after three months. For his own part, Sherlock agreed. His wounds were healed, his energy restored, his hunger to resume the hunt resurgent. Yet, it seemed…churlish to tell the abbot that he would leave without fulfilling what was expected of him in return- a contribution to society as a mendicant monk. The dilemma had stalled Sherlock for days.

He sighed. As the gong sounded to signal an end to the group meditation, he rose to his feet and made his way down the corridor overlooking the courtyard below. There the latest intake of initiates was being put through their paces in the first move of combat Tai Chi Chuan. Something caught his eye, and he stopped to observe. The novices were supposed to be watching the master complete the "Grasping Sparrow's Tail" defence against an attack. One of the masked and robed figures was trying to avoid being seen while he sneaked a look to the left, behind the master and his opponent. Following the man's eye line, Sherlock realised he was looking at one of the storerooms, and wondered why. He knew it contained bags of rice, the straw and animal feed that would see the monastery through the winter months. It was locked- to protect it from the villagers and merchants who came in and out of the courtyard delivering supplies. Travellers too would stop here overnight on their journeys up to the border with Nepal or down to the Tibetan plain along the Dogxung Zangpo river basin and the capital at Lhasa. Far to the east, this river would bend its way south to become the mighty Brahmaputra, emptying itself into the ocean in west Bengal. The monastery was not far from the G318 Road that crossed the Himalayas at Kodari, and those moving between Nepal and Tibet would often stop to rest. The rooms earned the order some currency, so the travelers were not turned away.

There was something suspicious in the novice's behaviour, but it was hard to put his finger on it. Sherlock tried to single the man out, probing what made the silent figure different from the other five in the intake. This novice was shorter and slighter than the others. There were subtle differences in the way the robe was folded, the way he wore the thick woollen socks and sandals. It was never easy to distinguish one newcomer from another- by design, they were anonymised. They were masked, so no facial features or hair colour could be used to distinguish him. Denied the right to speak for the first month, they had no accent or voice timbre to define them. He observed the one who caught his eye for almost ten minutes, taking in the minutia of posture, stance, fluency of movement. During that time, the man took another well-disguised look at the storeroom. Not conspicuously- just enough to attract Sherlock's hypersensitive awareness.

A few hours after nightfall, Sherlock was still awake and contemplating what had made him curious. The monks usually retired at sunset. Oil for lamps was expensive, and at their altitude tree wood was scarce enough to make it unreasonable to burn it for heat unless necessary.

Unable to shake off his curiosity, he decided to investigate. He moved in the deeper shadows around the edges of the quiet courtyard, to avoid being seen by anyone else who might be awake. In the cold high altitude air, the stars were brighter than anything he'd ever seen before. His brief glance upwards made him stop suddenly and gasp as another memory intruded: a London alleyway, where the view of the stars was through a narrow gap as he walked beside John. For a moment, he had to force himself to breathe again.  _Loss-_ sometimes it blindsided him, reduced him to an aching need that pushed everything else out of his head.

It was the cold that forced him into motion again. At minus nineteen, standing still was a risk. So, he shoved the memory aside and focussed on the here and now. Getting the door open was an interesting challenge in the absence of his usual lock-pick, but the two thin pieces of metal that he had liberated from the kitchen- the rim of a tin of yak butter-served as a satisfactory substitute, once he had cleaned and dried them enough so they weren't slippery. The padlock was Tibetan- a strong steel hoop, fixed into a sturdy mechanism faced with the figure of a bodhisattva.

Once inside, he lit one of the candles from the box by the door, using a disposable cigarette lighter he'd liberated from one of the travellers. The cigarette that came with it had been an illicit delight. Three months without nicotine had been the hardest part of his stay at the monastery. The hit had been almost ecstasy, and it had given him the shakes for almost a half hour afterwards. Just the sound of the lighter sputtering to life reignited his need for more. He tried to ignore it and, in the light cast by the candle, he started to investigate just what could have drawn the novice's attention.

He found evidence quickly enough- the dusty floor showed signs of shoes that were not the monks' sandals, rather, boots with a serious tread- perhaps military or serious climbing gear. He was following their trail with his eyes towards a pallet load of garam flour sacks when he heard the metallic sound of a door catch from across the courtyard. He blew the candle out and then hid himself behind the plastic wrapped bales of straw. Moments later, the storeroom door was opened with a key, and two figures came in.

The initiate- he recognised from the folds of his robe, and the way he walked. And a traveller, who had come to the monastery this afternoon, a Chinese man on his way back from Nepal. Sherlock had only heard of his arrival, but not laid eyes on him until now.

The novice spoke first, and Sherlock was stunned. A _woman's_ voice!

"This had better be good, Zhu. Why wasn't last week's pick-up enough? If I get caught out here with this key, I will be expelled, and you will lose this staging post." Her English accent was good, but his trained ear could detect an Eastern European undercurrent.

"Four packets- special order needs to move tonight. So, hand key over now, and then you go back to chanting." The Chinese man spoke English the way a Triad member would have learned it- at school somewhere in the Cantonese speaking south. He was now sweeping his torch's light over the stacks of goods, searching. Sherlock pressed himself deeper between the bales of straw to avoid being spotted. Once the light moved on, he leaned out again so he would see.

She had pulled her cowl down off and removed the novice's mask. Sherlock caught a gleam of blonde hair, all the more shocking for not having seen anyone with that hair colour for many months.

"I told your predecessor what was needed." She sounded annoyed.

Zhu returned the torch's beam to her face. "I know. Here." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a block of what Sherlock deduced would be clay, tallow or plasticine- something to take an impression of the key.

The woman passed over the key, which the Chinese man pressed into the semi-soft material. She nodded, "Good. Get the next courier to drop off the copy next week, and I will make sure to hide it where the next novice placed here can use it."

"When you go?"

She shrugged. "Another two weeks. I have to leave before the month is up and they take the masks off. Tell the dragonhead to find a recruit my height, so we can do a swap. Let him take my place and I can go out as a traveler. We need someone going the whole six months before getting replaced with another novice."

Zhu chuckled. "You one crazy lady. Crazy to think woman could hide here."

She shrugged. "It works. They never suspect I'm female. This robe and the mask are almost as good a disguise as a burkha. It's the same reason I suggested using this monastery- hiding something unexpected in plain sight works because no one thinks beyond what they expect to see. For the same reason, this staging post is perfect for the drugs. The border crossing is too conspicuous and the trucks are searched at Nielamuzhen forty miles down the road from here. This way you can move the drugs in bulk, but store it here so it can be taken out in smaller parcels before the search." She walked over to the flour sacks. "Lift off the three on the top. Bring the fourth one down. It's the first of twelve others."

When he had retrieved six brick sized plastic wrapped bundles from the flour sack, the pair finished their work and slipped back out into the courtyard. Sherlock was busy calculating.

Just before dawn, he sat across from the Abbot. "The colour of the powder in the packages suggests highly refined heroin, uncut at this stage. So, much more valuable than the common version moved from the Golden Triangle. The street value in London of what went out the storeroom door was roughly £100,000- so more than a million is still in there."

The old man's forehead creased with worry at the sum. "You fulfill your name,  _mthong mang po*._  If the world knows good as good, it is because such evil exists. With so much at stake, we must tread carefully and think about the best way to respond. To take action will cause reaction, and they will not hesitate to destroy us and the work we do."

Over the months, Sherlock had come to respect the Abbot's sensible attitude. He was no ivory tower theologian. "I have a plan," and described his idea.

The tall old man listened carefully and then thought it through. "So, this is your way of fulfilling your obligation to us?"

Sherlock had not thought of it as such, but now that the man had said it, he nodded. "As Lao Tzu said, 'one must first strengthen something, if one wishes to destroy it.' Infiltration will allow me to complete my task- and once inside, I will ensure that the drug traffic leaves your monastery." The plan was simple- expose the woman intruder, let her go across the border in exchange for knowledge about the gang running the drugs. The abbot could pass on the news, so she would be arrested by the Nepalese. That should keep her out of circulation for a while, allowing him to use knowledge about the drugs to do what he had come to China to do, destroy a criminal network from the inside. While he was inside this triad, he would use the time to spot his next target, and then carry on until he uncovered Moriarty's men.

"Tell me why you wish to do such a thing."

Sherlock decided to quote back to the master one of his own sayings, "The sharp instruments of the state cannot be shown to the people."

That made the old man shake his head. "You are no spy, no government sent you." He looked into the grey green eyes watching him, his own brown eyes showing some sadness. "But you are still angry. It consumes you. Like a flame from that lighter hidden in your sleeve, you will extinguish yourself. I would know the cause of this anger. "

Sherlock sighed. "Why does it matter? What difference does my motivation make? The effect will be the same. You will be rid of a threat, and your work can continue. Surely that is good."

"Perhaps. But at your expense." The abbot hesitated. "Do you remember the teapot?" When Sherlock nodded, the Buddhist continued, "Clay was shaped to make a container. The space within its emptiness gave it function. Build walls like our storeroom and in its emptiness, there is the function of a room- but it now holds danger. You need to empty yourself of your anger, or you will fail in your goal. Strive to not strive."

Now it was Sherlock's turn to shake his head. "I am ready to leave. And this will be my way of giving something back, to fulfill your requirement that 'the good person be the teacher of the bad person."

That made the abbot chuckle. "According to the Tao, that sentence must be completed by its other half: 'The bad person is the resource of the good person.' Perhaps it is me who is taking advantage of you."

Seven months later, Sherlock had the time to recall that conversation. Was he the "bad person" being taken advantage of by the abbot, who was the "good person"? Or was the Tibetan saying something more profound? Like Yin and Yang, the good and bad was in each of them, both teacher and resource were needed to get on in the world. If so, then sitting on the floor of his cold cell in Harbin, Sherlock finally understood the rest of that bit of the  _Tao te Ching_.

_Those who do not value their teachers_  
And do not love their resources  
Although intelligent, they are greatly confused.  
This is called the essential wonder.

Between his conversation with the abbot in Tibet and this cell in Harbin lay months of undercover work with the triads. He inveigled his way through them collecting evidence, sowing the seeds of discord, identifying the fallen angels whom Moriarty had put in place- the party officials, the factory owners, entrepreneurs and police who owed him protection.  _Guanxi_  gave these arrangements a perfect cultural disguise. Lars Sigurson took care to ensure that the data would eventually be shared not just with the anti-corruption office in Beijing, but also with the intelligence services outside China. Success in Hong Kong and Shanghai led him northwards, in the hope of tackling the criminal gangs who linked up to their Russian counterparts. The cybercrime centres were up there, as he followed the trail of money laundering links set up in Asia by the Dutchman, Maupertius.

And then he had committed the most basic of errors. Assuming the Russian connection was valued by the Qiao Si Triad, he'd walked in and told them that he was Lars Sigurson, who could help them get more out of the Russian pipeline of drugs, money and human trafficking. They saw only his blue eyes, white skin and blond hair, now grown out and dyed again after the shaven head of his Tibetan months. As such he had to be a Russian spy, rather than a Chinese ally. His race could not lie.

While he tried to meditate on the abbot's teachings, another voice came into his mind. "Friends protect people."  _Oh, John._   _I meant what I said. I don't have friends. I just had one._ And now he was in a strange limbo, waiting to see if the new leader of the  _Tambovskaya bratva_ , Yelena Barsukovna Yumashevo, would prove him wrong by paying his ransom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: * "Guizi" is the mandarin equivalent of the Cantonese Gweilo, a derogatory term for a foreigner. Literally translated as "devil". Rlung lang po mthong mang po = Tibetan for "angry one who sees too much; "纹身" = no tattoo. "Я не член bratva. Я – консультант" = "I am not a member; I am a consultant." If you don't know who Yelena is, and want to know how Lars formed what he hopes will be seen as a friendship, read my story, Mister Turner's Masterpiece in the Fallen Angel series.


	12. Curiosity

"So, tell me about him."

"About who?" John tried to say it nonchalantly, as if he didn't really know to whom she was referring.

She looked down at the glass of wine in her hand, and then back up to his eyes. Hers were gentle. "You know who. Your friend. The one who died. The person you've been grieving for."

So many things came into John's mind at once. He didn't want to talk about Sherlock- not to anybody. Not even friends who knew them both. The doctor found it almost impossible to talk to Mrs Hudson, or Molly, who looked at him and just wanted him to tell them  _why_. As if he was somehow privy to the man's thinking and could make the inexplicable easier for them to understand. He'd had a shouting match with Lestrade, and stormed off raging at Sherlock:  _Why didn't you tell me, you bloody wanker? They all think I knew you better than they did, enough that somehow I should have seen something, done something. I can see it in their eyes- they blame me for not stopping you._ As a result, he started avoiding them- not returning calls, and then he moved from Baker Street, and didn't pass on his new details.

What little socialising he'd had done since then would founder at this point in the conversation. In fact, when he thought about it, he'd made no new friends at all since Sherlock died. The blog and the newspaper coverage had made him famous by association- people would suddenly realise that he was  _that_  John Watson. When curiosity overcame their reluctance to raise the topic, they'd ask about him-  _the fake detective._  He'd come to expect it. But this time, looking at Mary Morstan, he wished it hadn't, really, really wished it hadn't. Because he liked her, a lot. Could be more, if only this topic of conversation hadn't come up, didn't make him remember the pain all over again.

She must have seen his struggle. She was perceptive like that- more than any other woman he'd known. Then she clinched it for him by saying, "You know what? Forget I asked that question. It's none of my business."

Oddly enough, just as soon as she said it, he realised that it was her business. The others who had asked got a polite but empty answer and then the relationship would end, because he could predict the questions that would follow, and his increasingly evasive answers. No friendship in its early stages could deal with that kind of pressure. He had hoped Mary was different.

So, he found himself asking her the question. "Why do you think it's not your business?" He needed to know. If this, the growing connection he felt, wasn't important to her, then she'd shrug off the questions that she must have been thinking of asking. Had asked, or at least started to ask. She'd run for cover. But, if she did care for him, then it was her business, and she had a right to ask. And he should answer.  _Maybe it's time I stopped being a coward, Sherlock. I've used you as an excuse for too long._

That thought made him have to suppress a giggle.  _God, even NOW you just can't stop getting in the way, can you?_

He looked up into a bemused set of blue eyes. "What's going on? What's so funny?"

He stalled by pouring himself another glass of wine, and offering her some.

"No thanks, I'm good."

That was half the problem. She  _was_  good, good for him. Her eyes didn't release him from her latest question, a half smile already on her mouth, in anticipation of something they could both laugh about. Strange thing was, she probably would laugh. That's part of the reason why he connected so well with her. They shared a sense of humour, a way of looking at things.

John would never know if it was the second glass of wine that loosened his tongue, and eased his inhibitions. "It's just funny… you see, when we shared a flat, he was just…toxic to any kind of dating or socialising I did. He'd demand that I drop everything in the middle of a date or a pub session, to come help him on a case. Nothing was more important than me helping him. He was totally egocentric in that way. Then he'd see things in the women I was going out with, and with his total insensitivity, just come out with the truth. He was like that. he didn't understand relationships. Unfiltered. Excruciatingly honest. Hard as hell to live with."

"Then why did you?"

"Because he was…" He stuttered to a halt for a moment, before continuing, "...magnificent. Amazing. An utter wanker. Socially inept, painfully rude without realising it. A self-confessed sociopath who either scared or irritated the hell out of most people, and a genius. I…" he ran out of steam, so he ended the way he had once to Mycroft. "I was never bored."

She smiled. "Thank you for telling me that. It's enough. I thought I should ask."

"Why?" Now he was the curious one.

"Because I wasn't in the country at the time when he died. Out in Africa, news was what you might hear on the BBC World Service. I couldn't be bothered- seemed light years away from what was going on in the camps, or in the surrounding countryside. So, I didn't know anything about him, at all, until one of the other nurses at the practice saw me making moon eyes at you and tried to warn me off."

That annoyed him. " _Warn_  you? About what? Who was it?"

"Nope, not going there. I don't gossip about fellow employees, or with them either. That's what I told her, too. Trouble was, she got on her high horse and decided it was her duty to tell me that you were too 'damaged' by the whole thing, so I should just stay away from you if I knew what was good for me. I told her to piss off. I  _know_  damage when I see it and you, John Watson, are not damaged. I also know what is good for me, and you are good for me." She smiled and then stuck her tongue out at him.

He raised his glass in a mock salute. "And you, Mary Morstan, are good for me."

oOo

Even so, it took him a while to open up. Something he'd see, something she'd do, would bring a half suppressed smirk to the surface. She was tentative at first but eventually got braver. This time, they were at a restaurant, and the waiter was apologising profusely that the credit card machine was rejecting his card, and did he want to have another go?

This time, he was more deliberate in his touch on the key pad, and the transaction went through. That's when she saw the smirk.

"Okay, what's it this time?"

He looked at her, trying not to giggle. "I had a row with a chip and pin machine one time, in a supermarket when I was buying groceries. I stormed off back to Baker Street, leaving everything behind at the self-service check-out after shouting at the bloody machine. Sherlock found my confession amusing. He deduced immediately that it wasn't my ineptitude or the machine, but rather my low bank balance that caused it. And that I was seriously pissed off about it all. He didn't say a thing, just gave me his card and his pin number and told me to use it. Later, he did the same for just about everything- bills, taxi fares, whatever."

"That's…remarkably generous." Mary's forehead wrinkled a bit as she thought it through. "Doesn't really fit with the self-confessed sociopath label you mentioned."

"Yeah, well that's the whole point. That's what makes me smile. He wasn't, you see. It was an act. Oh, sure, he didn't get social interaction as a rule, he was convinced that he had no friends- but he said he was willing to make an exception in my case."

She sniggered. "How kind."

"Yeah, well, the guy elevated rudeness to an art form. But in a weird way he could also be…amazingly supportive. I was such a mess after getting back from Afghanistan. I'd moan about having to do all the shopping, the bills, the, you know,  _stuff_ \- because he'd never get off his aristocratic butt to help out. But, in a way, because he didn't do any of that, maybe he really couldn't because of who he was, it made me get on with it and do it all myself. Now I realise it was sort of rehabilitation by stealth."

He looked down at the table, as if afraid to let the pain of his loss be seen. "He knew me better than anyone, better than even I knew myself. He healed me. And, I didn't understand that until it was…too late." He decided not to hide his distress, and he knew that she would see it.

She reached across and just laid her hand on top of his. "Hey. It happens. We don't always appreciate people until, well, after the fact. There is an answer to that, you know. Honour him now. Draw on what was good in your relationship. Knowing what you do now, because of him, what will you do differently?"

He looked up at her, startled by the question. "What do you suggest?"

" _Carpe diem_ , John. Don't waste any more time. Your friend taught you that. Now put it to good use." She smiled, and John knew that was when he loved her.


	13. What happened in China

"Don't. Just stop it now."

It was John's voice. With the same levels of distress that Sherlock had heard in it when he was standing on the roof of St Bart's and John was on the phone. The worry and the barely suppressed realisation of what Sherlock was about to do.

_I can't, John. This time I think I might be going mad, and if something doesn't happen soon, I think it will be too late._

Trying to shut the voice down, he opened his eyes. Unfortunately, it made no difference. He was in total darkness. His Chinese guards liked to play tricks with the light. The one naked bulb overhead (and well out of reach, alas) was turned on at odd intervals. Sometimes it would be on for only a few minutes; other times it might be hours. But his ability to judge days was getting very wobbly. With no natural light, it was hard to tell the diurnal cycle. He guessed that his prison- a former store room of some sort- must be deep underground, because there was no discernible difference in temperature- it was always cold and damp.

He knew the drill- conduct under capture. Stay strong by establishing a routine of mental and physical exercise. But without a better sense of time, it was getting very hard. He couldn't count on food- sometimes it seemed to arrive too close together, when he wasn't hungry. But if he didn't eat, they took it away, and then it felt like days before something else came. They were purposefully messing with his body clock. He had tried to use the water as a method of keeping track, but they liked to play games with that, too. Sometimes it was a small bottle, sometimes large. He had learned to drink whatever came, because he had no idea how long it would be before the next. He would drink it and then count the time it took before the need to urinate was overwhelming. By his reckoning, that should be about 3 hours.

"Who's the doctor here?" His avatar John was standing in the Mind Palace corridor, hands on hips, and a frown on his face.  _I should have asked you this sort of thing; I got lazy, relying on you being there to answer my questions whenever I needed this sort of information. You have no idea, John, how useful it was to have a doctor as my partner when investigating._

That made him feel odd.  _Is this guilt? I'm not really familiar with this feeling._ He had not spent enough time letting John know how useful he was.

The one thing the guards couldn't affect was the growth of stubble. He hated the way it felt; he'd never been tempted to grow a beard or mustache. By what he could feel when he rubbed his chin in the dark, he estimated that he had to have been held for more than two weeks- probably nearer to three. But hair grew too slowly for it to be any reliable guide apart from that.

_What's taking so long?_  Avatar John just shrugged. "Don't ask me. You never bothered to tell me anything about your trip to Russia, so how do you expect me to have a view on whether Yelena Barsovna will ransom you?"

Sherlock sighed. Towards the end, he'd had to keep John in the dark about too many things. His first "high profile" case from Elizabeth –the return of the stolen Turner watercolour- had been an opportunity to start putting distance between himself and the doctor.

_It was for your own good, John. If you'd known what I had planned, then you would have tried either to get involved, or to stop me. That would have made you even more of a target, and defeated the whole process of putting Moriarty in a position where he had to confront me._

"Like that turned out so well." His John avatar was not happy. The doctor shrugged. "But what do I know?"

_Yes, precisely. What you didn't know, wouldn't hurt you._

The light came back on, blinding Sherlock completely, making him cry out in pain. The over-stimulation hit his senses like a flood, and he gagged. Nausea was becoming the stock response of his body now to just about everything, so he guessed that it was a good thirty six hours since he'd eaten anything. He staggered to his feet and started walking. The room was only two meters wide and three in length, but he had learned to keep his hand on the wall to keep track of where he was. He paced the length, turned at the metal door and then back the other side. His prisoner's shoes- a strange combination of recycled car tyre sole and cotton upper were too tight. He supposed that he had big feet compared to the native Manchurian. The clothes – a thin tunic and trousers that were too short- did little to keep the cold out, so he walked in part to stay warm and get his circulation going again. Part of the routine.

He'd learned about conduct under capture early on. Figuring out how to rescue the banker who had been kidnapped gave him a legitimate excuse for research into the subject. He never told John that he also had a personal reason to learn more. After all, he'd soon be spending months in close detention- virtual house arrest- by the CIA. The Americans had only been told by Elizabeth that he was an asset turned – a Moriarty henchman that MI6 had taken and convinced to turn against the network. The cover was perfect; Lars Sigurson's credentials had been built up over the previous six months, so he was perfectly believable and no one would ever associate Sherlock Holmes with the man- not even Mycroft. He spent six months as a prisoner, being shuttled between the CIA HQ in Langley and a secure facility run by the FBI n Quantico where he was kept in solitary confinement. He was under surveillance the entire time ( _what's new? Mycroft's been doing that for years)._ Still, he'd prepared for it by reading up on what to do when kidnapped; it was much the same experience. Working under apparent duress for the Americans was part of a deal- he'd help out with their pursuit of the network, in exchange for his freedom at the end of it. It got him out of the UK in a CIA plane, which he never told Mycroft about. And it earned him liberation at the end of it, when he slipped across the border into Canada, able to pick up the first of his four cached fake passports, assuming another identity that his brother knew nothing about.  _What you don't know, can't be used against you, brother mine._

In those final months, there had been arguments between him and his brother- real ones, not just the ones they did for show, to keep Moriarty thinking that he had the pair of them at loggerheads. Their enmity was quite close to the truth. Mycroft had not really forgiven him for coming up with the whole idea, and then making him sit on the side lines, recused from active involvement. Only at the end, he needed Mycroft's help with the thirteen rooftop scenarios.

"Ahem."  _Oh, bother._  It was his Mycroft avatar's way of attracting his attention. That rather pompous way of clearing his throat when he wanted Sherlock to pay attention. He rolled his eyes in exasperation.  _Can't you see I'm busy?_  He kept walking, starting to feel his muscles stretching into something like their normal configuration.

"That wasn't the  _only_  help I gave you. I also made sure you didn't weaken when it came to John Watson." Mycroft was wearing his light grey pinstripe suit, the one that made him look more than ever like the minor British Civil Servant that he liked to claim that he was. Sherlock was about to open his mouth to tell him to piss off, when the room was plunged into darkness again. Only four circuits of the small room- less than two minutes of light, even with the shuffling gait that he could manage with the wretched shoes. He kept his fingers on the wall and kept going in the darkness, his other hand now stretched out in front of him to make sure he didn't walk face-first into the stone wall. He had to go slower, but he would keep at it. The exercise was important- a target of twenty laps as often as he could face it. He could measure his progress by the difference that his fingers felt when he passed the metal door- that and the smell of the plastic slop bucket that served as his toilet. The first time he'd "kicked the bucket" when walking in the dark had taught him to position it a good meter away from the far wall.

_Oh, well; I will grant you that little victory regarding John. You were SO sure that he would never be able to lie, you just couldn't resist the opportunity to prove it to me with that ridiculous story about Irene Adler._  It had been one of the worst moments in the run up to the final showdown on the roof. Mycroft had obviously asked John to tell him that Irene had been put into some ridiculous witness protection scheme. Of course, he'd been able to deduce from John's horribly bumbling efforts that his brother was trying to tell him that she was dead.  _That's what you think, you fat git._  He'd taken a great deal of pleasure organising her rescue, if only to be able someday to tell Mycroft what had actually happened.

"Ahem" His brother's avatar was now glaring at him."That little charade proved my point. Even when he thought he was lying to protect your  _feelings_ , he was so blatantly incapable of it that it made you realise that you could never tell him. If you were going to go through with your master plan, then you had to have the courage of your convictions. It was my duty to point out your weaknesses, brother mine, and to try to save you from them."

_We've had this argument before; I concede you were right on the matter of John. Move on; get over it._  He hated to admit that he'd nearly caved in several times; the temptation to share the truth with John had become nearly overwhelming the closer the final confrontation came. Just when he needed to talk to his only friend the most, he wasn't able to. Sherlock had to face alone the strange combination of adrenaline fuelled anxiety as his plans against Moriarty started to bear fruit and the odd cloud of depression that settled around him in the last few months.

Sherlock was no stranger to depression; it had dogged him all his life, and he knew the symptoms well. He'd grown quieter, more withdrawn. The case work – what little Elizabeth was able to feed him- came too rarely; he was forced back onto the occasional private client able to circumvent Mycroft's interdiction tactics. And he'd delved into a number of historical cases of miscarriages of justice, like the Peter Black case, just to pass the time. His only other occupation had to be done surreptitiously – building up Lars Sigurson's reputation as an astute player in Moriarty's network took time- and it was hard to do so without being able to take on the persona physically. The strain of it all wore him out, and he'd felt like depression was loitering with intent, on the edges of his mind palace.

He was feeling that same black cloud now. He had tried hard to keep it at bay. Along with the walking and the occasional Tai Chi exercise, he kept his mind going with recounting each and every part of the network he'd smashed, embedding the data even deeper in his Mind Palace. For light relief, he resorted to rehearsing the inner workings of the Periodic Table, or musical composition. It was almost impossible for him to sleep, so he also went through the meditation exercises he'd learned in the Tibetan monastery, even to the extent of chanting out loud the texts that he had learned by heart. One advantage of a near eidetic memory- he could remember them easily.

But no matter what Sherlock tried to keep his mind busy and distracted, the black gloom broke through his defenses. As time wore on, the idea of rescue became dimmer and dimmer. If a ransom was going to be paid, then an exchange of e mails confirming that fact would have taken hours, not days. The longer he sat in the dark cell, the more laps he added to his total of seven hundred and twelve circuits, the more his chances of getting released were slipping away.

The depression hugged him as tight as the darkness surrounding him. He knew that it was the  _unknown_  that had triggered this current bout. Not knowing how long it would take his captors to realise that the Russian ransom would not be coming. Not knowing how they would decide to kill him once they did realise that he had no value for them. Odd that- the method was important to him. He'd not been one to be afraid of dying; he'd rather expected it when he was younger. If it wasn't the chance criminal getting lucky, it might have been the bouts with drugs. He'd overdosed on purpose a couple of times, prepared to accept death at his own hand rather than carry on in the dark place that he had become marooned within.

A bit like this room. There was no contact with his guards, no one spoke to him. Oddly, he'd welcomed the beatings he got on the first two days in captivity –close physical proximity gave him a chance to use his deductive skills to probe for a weakness, try to get them talking. But, once they got Yelena's name from him, all contact stopped. The hatch at the bottom of the metal door would open- nine inches wide and four inches from the floor to the top of the metal flap- and a plastic tray would slide in, sometimes with water or food. It always happened when the lights were on. The very first time the tray was accompanied by the curt command- "空水桶"*. He'd take whatever they were delivering out of the tray and empty his toilet bucket in. He tried not to think too much about the hygiene issues associated with the common usage.

When he tried to get them to talk, there was no reply. The one time he decided to do nothing, the tray was slid back out, and he had to cope with no food, no water and no light, as well as a stinking toilet bucket for ages. His sensory distress at that meant he only tried it the once.

Another time, he'd waited for the hatch to open, then drew the plastic tray in and placed it aside, before heaving the contents of the bucket straight through the hatch. He wanted to catch a guard unawares, soak him in the urine and excrement. Sherlock wanted to provoke an angry reaction- for someone to come into the cell and try to beat him- it would give him a chance to make contact and start a conversation that could lead to his freedom. But, even this limited hope faded when there was no reaction to the thrown effluent.

Depression about the hopelessness of it all seized his chest from the inside, and his cuticles hurt. He stopped walking and sank down on his haunches in the dark, back to the wall. He hugged his knees to his chest and rocked. If Yelena was going to pay the ransom, it would have happened before now. The delay in killing him was getting too much to bear. He kept wondering how he would be dispatched. Would they spend a bullet on him? Or try to strangle him? He doubted that; he'd fight and they knew that. Perhaps it would be poison in the food; it would surely be the easiest and cheapest way, with minimal risk.

He wondered if he should stop eating now. He thought he might. Dying through starvation would be less painful than poison. And it would be a last act of defiance. He decided that it would be best to stop drinking the water, too. Poison could be ingested that way, and dehydration would speed his loss of consciousness and hasten his death.  _Yes, I've had enough of this._

"Just stop it now." The John avatar was back. "You don't get to give up."

_Be quiet and go away, John. If you were real, I might be willing to argue with you. But the real you thinks I am dead already. You aren't worrying about me anymore; and Mycroft will eventually realise that I am not coming back. He gets to say he was right all along about my crazy plan. Peace at last, for all concerned._

Sherlock recalled an earlier moment, in a grave yard, where he had observed John's soliloquy. His friend was speaking out loud, even though in theory he believed that Sherlock was buried under the tombstone. The real John had said, "please, there's just one more thing, mate, one more thing: one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't ... be ... dead. Would you do ...? Just for me, just stop it… Stop this."

_Sorry, John; I'm fresh out of miracles._

The lights came back on, and he growled his annoyance as his eyes were blinded by the glare again. He heard the metal door being unlocked.  _So, they have decided to kill me now._  He staggered up to his feet, and tried to get his eyes to focus on the shapes. He wanted to look death in the eye, but it was very hard to see anything through the retinal overload. Two people, he could tell that much but little else.

"Видите? Он жив, как мы и обещали. Теперь заплатить и уехать."**

The Chinese guard's Russian was a little rusty, but Sherlock got the gist of it at the same time as his nose identified a scent he had not smelled in a very long time.

"Right. A little worse for wear, but he'll do. Wrap him up; I'll take him home with me." Matter-of fact, as if speaking to a shop keeper after making a purchase. In English, and delivered by a voice he recognised as well as her perfume.

Sherlock smiled. "Miss Adler. You have no idea what a pleasure it is to see you again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: * "empty the bucket". ** "See? He is alive, as we promised. Now pay up and leave."


End file.
